


When I Dream of You

by Goodnightsammy



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Ben Solo is a Mess, Ben Solo sees his parents, Complete, Creepy Snoke (Star Wars), Enemies to Lovers, Evil Snoke, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Force Bond (Star Wars), Friends to Enemies, Friends to Enemies to Lovers, Friends to Lovers, Happy Ending, Jedi Ben Solo, Kylo Ren Needs a Hug, Kylo Ren Redemption, Kylo Ren and Rey Are Not Related, Not Canon Compliant - Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Pre-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Rey Needs A Hug, Rey and Ben meet as children, Rey talks to Ben in her sleep, Reylo - Freeform, Snoke Being a Dick, Soft Ben Solo, Young Ben Solo, Young Rey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:55:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 25
Words: 30,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22096723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goodnightsammy/pseuds/Goodnightsammy
Summary: Rey of Jakku has been having dreams of Ben Solo for most of her life. She never expected to meet him in person, the boy she spoke to in her dreams, never expected to find her way off planet either. But when a BB-8 droid crosses her path with a map to Luke Skywalker, she finds herself doing a lot of things she never expected to.-OR- In which Rey has been talking to Ben Solo through a force bond long before he becomes Kylo Ren--and long after. He loses himself along the way, but they will always find their way back to each other.
Relationships: Kylo Ren & Rey, Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey & Ben Solo, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 186
Kudos: 739





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Most of the Reylo stories I've written so far could be described as 'quick,' 'short,' or 'little.' In an effort to amend that travesty, I've decided to write a slow-burn Reylo. It should take some time to complete, but I've already started working on the next chapter. I hope you enjoy.

Light bends through the window, a soft, dusty thing, drifting like a memory over the open air. It pulls Rey out of sleep like her mother’s low morning whispers, and the girl, still just a child, draws her brow in confusion. There are no windows in the empty shell of the AT-AT she calls home. She thinks, vaguely, that she is still sleeping, gives the light nothing more than a passing thought—Merely lost in another dream where her parents return and take her away. It hasn’t been long, only months since they’d gone, and she was certain they’d be back any day now. Holding onto hope so strongly that it leaked into each restless night. She opens her eyes to the dream, expecting the warm face of her mother to greet her. But no, when she turns her head toward the day streaming into the room like a waterfall of gentle golden light, she finds a boy in the place of her parents.

“Who are you?” She questions, little arms placed daringly on her hips, nose stuck out toward the older boy in front of her. He turns in his chair to face her, quiet with confusion. His head cocks slightly to the side at the sight of her, dark hair brushing over his face with the motion. His deep brown eyes seem to be studying her, reading the sand-stained girl up and down, but even under the scrutiny of his gaze, it feels slow here, and safe—so unlike the desert where only the dead stand still.

“How did you get in here?” He asks softly, his voice far away, as if Rey was hearing him through a pane of thick glass. The way he says _here_ sounds so much bigger than the small room they are in, as if she has found herself in a place beyond. It feels special, secret, as if outside of the door to this little room there is nothing, and yet everything. _Sacred,_ she thinks to herself. Her mother had whispered it to her once as her father told stories of knights with laser swords. It’s a feeling she knows well from the graveyards. How there, among the bare-scavenged x-wings, she can sense the ghosts of them in the silence. Of something _more than_ lingering just outside of her sight. But before she can reply, Rey feels herself drifting, being pulled back into that dull wakefulness _._ His words echo around inside of her even after she wakes to the cold metal walls of the walker. She is too young to understand the hollow feeling inside of her as the mystery of him settles between her ribs.

That was the first night she dreamt of Ben Solo.

*

“Why do we always have to end up in _my_ dreams,” Ben asked in a puff of breath, face drawn with teenage sullenness. Only just fifteen and full of a deeper exhaustion, a tiredness more than sleep that always seemed to settle into the set of his shoulders and the muscles of his jaw. Rey was sprawled out on his bed, young limbs stretching against the soft fabric, looking up toward the ceiling. It had been a month since they’d started meeting in sleep. Rey had begun looking forward to the nights where she would awake to _him_. They were still few and far between, but filled her with such a sense of belonging, of not being _alone_ for the first time since her parents had gone.

“Because my dreams are _boring,_ ” Rey sighed, nearly seven and seething with a restless curiosity, with a wonder of places systems away. She rolled onto her stomach and lifted her head to gaze at Ben. He was lounging at his desk again—that’s where she found him most nights. Always quietly at work at something he refused to let her see. While sometimes she awoke to tall trees stretching up toward the sky and more green than she could ever imagine, or a wide blue lake sparkling like the stars, most nights it was here, in this room. While she enjoyed the adventure of places she’d never seen, she didn’t mind it here either.

“And _this_ isn’t boring?” He wondered aloud, voice exasperated and arm sweeping to encompass their surroundings. In this dream, like all others, he wore white robes that seemed to flush gold against the sunlight. Such stark contrast to his pale skin and dark hair. _Do you like the sun?_ She wanted to ask, _there’s so much sun at home, you could drown in it._ But the question seemed silly even as it formed on her lips.

“I’ve never been off of Jakku,” Rey said simply. She wondered if the word meant the same to him—if he could see the sand spilling from her mouth as she spoke. _How old are you?_ He had asked her the second night, _you look so young and yet—_

She watched his face soften at her words, understanding washing over him like a rush of cool water. _We all want to escape_ , Ben had said to her then , _maybe that’s what this is? An escape._ It hadn’t felt like one—there was too much belonging and not enough fear when she was with him. _Escape_ meant running, meant hiding. These easy nights with Ben felt so much more like finding a friend.

“I don’t mind my dreams so much,” he offered, turning back in his chair, buried again in that never-ending task she was not welcome to. Rey craned her head to look, to see what was so important on the other side of his shoulder, but he was already fading, the room turning to fog around them.

“Good,” she had answered instead, settling back into the bed, already one foot stepping into the day.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi there! Here's another chapter. I'm pretty far ahead in the writing process, so I'll try to post pretty frequently to avoid that terrible writer's block that always seem to hit. Feel free to comment and let me know what you think, I'm always open to suggestions! Enjoy.

The first time Rey saw Ben in the light of day, she was eight years old.

*

Rey scaled the side of the imperial cruiser with expert ease. She had scavenged this ship many times before and already knew all the proper footholds to climb up easily into the engine room. So _many_ times before, in fact, that she almost _didn’t_ scavenge the cruiser today. Surely there would be nothing left of value in the long dead wreckage, picked over through the years. As she wandered past, the hot Jakku rays beating down on her, she felt a pull. A feeling bloomed low in her gut and she knew she’d find something big today, something long overlooked, buried deep by sand and time.

She gritted her teeth as she climbed, beads of sweat gathering at the corners of her temples, curling the dark hair there. It was unusually warm that day, a dry wind picking up from the east that suggested a storm was fast approaching. Rey knew better than to go out scavenging on a day like this, but desperation pulled her out of her AT-AT and into the desert. It had been far too long since she had brought back something good to Plutt. He was getting antsy for a special find, and she was getting hungry.

Rey had almost reached the top when her sweat-damp palm slipped from its hold. She choked down a scream and closed her eyes, determined not to see the long drop beneath her. _You never look down in a place like this._ She dangled there for a moment, tan robes billowing about her, staff clanging against the side of the ship. Rey took a sharp breath in before throwing her arm up and pulling herself the last bit of the way. She wanted to sit for a moment, to calm herself down as the last thrums of fear hummed through her veins, but she didn’t have time. The wind was all but howling now outside of the cruiser, its insides creaking like low groans of the long dead. If she wanted to make it out of here in enough time to get home, to not be stranded in this rust bucket for the night, Rey had to work fast.

The wreckage itself was sideways in the sand, so Rey wandered down hallways by walking on the walls themselves. She was nearly to the engine room when she stopped in her tracks. All the best parts would be in there, but something tickled at the back of her mind. She had searched that room too many times—surely she wouldn’t have missed any lost treasures back there. She ran up the end of the hall before veering left instead of right—down instead of up. Rey slid into in a long corridor. The hall was cast in shadow as any traces of daylight were choked away by darkness. On each side a series of identical doors. _Officer’s quarters,_ she realized as she peaked through an open doorway. The room was coated in a thick layer of dust, and what abandoned belongings remained were strewn half hazard across the ground.

She wandered around the rooms for some time, the storm outside growing ever louder. Yet to find anything, she kicked frustratedly at the fourth spare pair of shoes she’d seen, glossy black even after all these years. They tumbled across the room before landing with a clunk. She turned her head toward where the flew, ears perked up toward the familiar sound of hollow metal. There, in the corner of the room, a battered and broken droid. Rey’s eyes sparkled. Droid parts were in high demand. Plenty of smugglers made their way to Plutt’s outpost in search of cheap parts to fix their stolen droids. She took out her screwdriver and began dismantling it, taking the most important pieces and shoving them into her pack. If she found Plutt in a good mood, she might get a week’s worth of portions out of the deal. She hid the rest as best she could, determined to return for it another day.

Rey was sliding back down the side of the ship she had scaled up earlier with the familiar hiss of sand pelting metal greeted her. She had taken too long, and now there would be no way to make it back home without getting turned around half a dozen times in the storm—or worse, buried. It was common enough around these parts for people to get caught in a sand storm only to be forgotten.

Rey found a spot to curl up away from the door and wait out the storm. She wasn’t easily spooked—having spent nearly two years on her own, she’d grown a thick skin to protect herself against the terrors of the desert, but the wind groaned throughout the imperial cruiser, and the pelting sand spoke to her in disturbing whispers. A thick chill like loneliness ran down her spine and settled deep in her stomach. She could feel the tears well up in her eyes even as she tried to steel herself against them.

And then he was there. Standing before her, dark eyes wide.

“Are you okay?” he asked, voice gentle. Sixteen now, all gangly frame and long limbs. “Where are you? I can’t see anything else.”

Rey sniffled, wiping her nose with her arm. “I got caught in the storm,” she breathed, looking up at him from her place on the floor, “I can’t go home tonight.”

“You’re awake?” He wondered, head turning from side to side, trying to see what wasn’t there.

 _Aren’t you?_ She wanted to say. He looked solid here, real—So unlike the dreamy hazes she was used to. What came out instead was quiet, weak, “will you stay with me?”

“I would—” Ben began, but he was distracted by a presence she could not see. He turned as if listening to another voice, “right away Master, yes I’m sorry Master.” He returned his gaze back to her—afraid and stranded, left with nothing but dirt and ghosts. “I’m sorry,” he offered, “I have to go.”

Then, Rey was alone again. She pulled her knees up closer to her chest, tucking her chin down between them, and let herself cry.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm posting this way earlier than I expected too, but that's good news, right? We're getting more into the nitty gritty here, and there are dark times ahead. But take heart, my friends, we'll make it through this--together. I hope you enjoy! And feel free to leave comments and suggestions, I'm always open to them.

“Who was that, the other night?” Rey asked, feeling the dream come to life around her, eyes opening to reveal a wide green meadow surrounded by emerald trees stretching up toward a sapphire sky. She imagined the trees climbing the air, grasping towards the blue atmosphere and the galaxy of stars beyond. Wildflowers spattered color across the scene as swaying blades of grass tickled her ankles.

“Mmm?” Ben hummed over is shoulder, sitting some ways ahead of her, back ramrod straight and focused on some point in the distance. She felt for the first time as if she were intruding here, in this far, quiet corner of his mind, but Rey ached for answers—for some explanation for why he would _leave_ her. It was a cold thing, the fearful reality that seeped through her on her lonelier nights. Ben was her only friend. These easy moments where she found herself in his room, sprawled out and listening to him huff and complain about nothing at all were the only things she had in the whole wide universe—and even he left, in the end.

“The other night—when we were awake,” she began again, voice wavering, quiet and unsure. She kicked at the dirt by her feet, “you were talking to someone.”

Ben sighed then, slumping his shoulders and tearing his eyes away from that point ahead of him. Rey realized he had been floating as she watched him sink back into the ground. _It’s a dream,_ she reminded herself, but the ease of his movements made her think he was far too used to hovering just above the earth. She wondered, if she tried hard enough, if she might float too.

“It was my uncle,” he answered, motioning for her to sit down beside him. She joined him, crossing her legs. She liked the feeling of the cool grass against her skin—the way it seemed to breathe in the wind. _Maybe I’ll find this place one day._

“Your uncle?” Rey repeated numbly. Ben had never talked about anything personal before, even his room was void of possessions that might suggest some life outside of the dream. It was so unlike her own dwelling—hand-made dolls and desert flowers scattered about as if she were trying to fill the emptiness inside of her with _things._ She could never tell if he just didn’t want to talk to _her_ about his life, or if his dreams were a sanctuary from what remained on the other side. Then again, Rey wasn’t one to share either. _We all want to escape,_ he had told her one. “You called him _master_ ,” the word tasted sour on the end of her tongue. She knew what it meant to be a slave, knew that’s what the smugglers whispered under their breaths as she walked past.

“He’s—teaching me,” Ben replied, studying the spiderweb lines in the palms of his hands. His words were careful, as if he were plucking them from the air one at a time.

“Teaching you what?” Rey pried, greed bubbling up her throat to know the things he wasn’t saying. The feeling of wanting, aching for answers a sharp, tangible thing in her mouth.

“His religion,” he said simply, falling back into the grass to look up at the clouds, his dark hair like a crown around his head. A bright yellow flower brushed gently up against his ear.

“Not yours?” She asked, unsure of where the question came from. His breathing stilled beside her and Rey realized she had gone too far. She wanted to pull the words back into herself, to swallow them whole inside of her. _I’m sorry._

“You’re way too old for eight,” Ben breathed, eyes glassy, as if he were seeing something far away. He didn’t answer the question, but from the blank look on his face, Rey was relieved he hadn’t. “He says I shouldn’t talk to things that come to me in dreams,” Ben’s voice was hollow, as if someone else was speaking through him, “says that the dark seduces us—always.”

 _There are others?_ Rey wanted to scream. She felt as if her world was tumbling around her. Jealousy crawled up inside of her, ugly and green, only to be snuffed out by something dark and quiet—something akin to shame or embarrassment. She could already see the mist forming at the edge of the field, could feel herself being pulled awake. _I_ _thought I was special with you,_ she wanted to yell. But she stayed silent, too hurt and afraid and young to speak. _You’re just a girl, he doesn’t need you. He has others, has family._ The dream was just about gone now, all that was left was Ben—his dark eyes cast in shadow, looking like deep pools of ink—and that stray yellow flower, still tickling at his ear.

“I try,” he sighed, the edges of him turning to dust, “but you’re not the dark, are you?” The doubt in his voice was thick, as if he didn’t quite believe it. He wasn’t talking to Rey anymore. It scared her a little, how quickly Ben turned into a ghost of himself, fading away as if he were never there at all. “I think you’re different.”

The words echoed around her and Rey wasn’t quite sure if he even said them at all. They rang in her ears, ran down her spine like a live wire. But when she woke to the sandy insides of the AT-AT, she folded the words around herself like a blanket, like it’s all she had. Because maybe it was.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is the longest yet, so I'm surprised it's getting posted so fast. Thank you all for the response on the previous chapters. The story is going to start picking up from here on out, so get ready for that. I know I'm taking some liberty with the ages in this story, but from my research I heard many different takes on just how old Ben and Rey actually were. Again, feel free to comment or leave suggestions. Thanks!

The next time they met, it was as if nothing ever happened.

It was on one of the odd occasions where Ben woke up in _Rey’s_ mind. He liked to poke around in her reality—she could see it in the small uptick of his smile, of the way his gaze washed hungrily over everything, needing to take it all in lest he miss something. He found her, that night, sitting atop one of the old x-wings, looking up at the sky. Except, unlike the dead star fighters she knew from the graveyard of the desert, this one was alive and running.

He climbed up to sit on the opposite wing, eyes fascinated by the endless dunes in the distance. In her dreams, they were always never ending. Her world was a sea of sand stretching out towards forever. The sun was just setting here, in this dream, and a warm red light washed over them. “My uncle used to fly one of these,” Ben said, breaking the easy silence. His hand brushed against the sun-warmed metal.

“Really?” Rey gasped, alight with curiosity. His life was so exciting compared to hers. From the stories he had told her, he’d seen many planets, touched the stars more times than he could count, and yet, Ben still looked at her world with wonder. It filled her with a sense of pride. But to think he’d know actual rebel fighters, that they were in his blood—well, that only made her want more for the space just on the other side of the wide-open atmosphere.

Rey had found an old helmet in the wreckage of a ship not unlike this one, and she had often fantasized of what might had gone on inside of the cockpit, who might have been manning the controls. She kept it with her inside of her AT-AT and wore it from time to time. It was far too big for her and hung low over her eyes so she couldn’t see out of the visor, but it reminded her of another life away from all of this.

Ben nodded in response. “I could take you,” he offered, standing up on the wing. The cockpit swung open with a hiss.

“Are you serious?” Rey exclaimed, excitement shooting through her veins. She’d never flown in _anything_ before, not even in her dreams.

“It’ll be a tight squeeze,” Ben said, sliding down into the pilot’s seat, “but we should fit.” She wondered if this was his way of apologizing. If he knew his words had hurt her the other night and was trying to make amends. His eyes were soft and kind as he looked up at her, and Rey decided that it didn’t really matter. She had already forgiven him anyways.

There wasn’t room for a passenger in the little fighter, but Ben held out his hand toward Rey, and she took it. The small girl settled on his lap, a wide, toothy grin splattered across her face. Her father used to let her sit on his lap when he took his old speeder to town for supplies. It was a memory she was most fond of—the feeling of the wind brushing past, clutched safely in his arms. As the cockpit slid closed above them, she thought she’d remember this one pretty fondly too.

Ben hit a few colored buttons on the dash, and Rey watched closely—taking everything in, trying to learn and remember. The ship sputtered to life with a dull roar, and the low hum it gave off thrummed through her. He pulled back on the controls, and the x-wing took off in a blur of light. They flew for what felt like hours, but the sun never wavered from its place on the horizon. Ben dipped low over the desert and spun them high in the cloudless sky. When they finally landed, Rey still laughed with a glee she hadn’t felt since her parents had left, eyes dazzled as Ben helped her up and out of her seat.

“You’re really good at flying,” Rey thanked him in the only way she knew how, “I want to be that good someday.”

Ben’s face broke out into a wide smile. “Someday,” he sighed, the horizon just starting to fade away, “maybe I’ll show you how.” It was an empty promise, and both of them knew it. Even as the nights bled into reality, there wasn’t much hope to ever see one another _beyond._ It didn’t matter then, though. Rey and Ben both woke up smiling that morning.

*

It was three years before they talked about the night in the meadow again.

Rey was wide awake when she happened upon Ben in desert. She noticed his familiar frame against the gold horizon. His broad shoulders were draped in the same white robes as always, and his dark hair drifted on the warm breeze. Rey wasn’t surprised anymore when he appeared, it was second nature now, him just being. She was dragging a netted bag full of parts behind her, just on her way to the outpost to exchange her most recent finds for portions. Her stomach growled, upset by the interruption. She hoped these parts would be enough for a good meal, but Plutt’s pockets were always tight—now it seemed, more than ever.

“Do you remember what I told you once?” He asked, back still turned to her. She glanced down at her dusty treasures as if to consider whether or not she had time to stand around in the sand and speak to shadows. Rey stopped walking a few feet behind him, having decided, waiting in anticipation for him to speak. He was nineteen now—an adult by all accounts, but he still talked to her as if she would understand _anything_. “About the dark?” He finished.

Rey nodded to herself quietly, of course she remembered. She dreamed of being there in the meadow with him more often than not on nights when her mind was her own. She remembered _master_ and _religion_ and of others speaking to him in dreams.

“It talks to me sometimes—whispers in the back of my mind, tells me…” Ben trailed off, letting the sentence go unfinished. It hung in the air, so thick she could almost see it. _What spirits walk with you?_ Her mother used to say. _What burdens do you carry alone?_ “They’re all afraid of me,” he said instead.

“The dark?” Rey asked, unsure of what he meant.

“My family,” he answered plainly. She saw it now, the tired dip in his shoulders, the white knuckled fists by his side. She had noticed it around the time they had first met, too— _that deeper exhaustion, a tiredness more than sleep._ It had grown worse over the years, she knew. But Ben never mentioned it, and Rey didn’t know how to ask. “They say there’s too much of my grandfather in me,” he continued, the words falling slow and heavy from his tongue.

“Oh,” Rey breathed. She didn’t know what else to say, didn’t know how to say it. Ben sounded so empty, so drained. But he had never spent more than a passing mention on his family. She didn’t know what any of it meant. He turned to her then, eyes dark and bruised, face sallow. It felt like Rey had failed him when he looked at her like that. He needed her to understand even what he couldn’t explain, and she had failed him.

“I don’t hear them, when I’m with you,” he said, in that same, empty way his voice always seemed to get when she wasn’t not sure if he knew that she was even there at all. He glanced down to the bag she clutched in her small, golden-tan hand. “Am I interrupting something?” Ben asked, cocking his head to the side to study her cocking his head to the side to study her as if finally realizing where, or when, he was.

“No,” Rey shook her head, dropping the bag beside her as if to prove her point, “no it’s alright.” Even as she spoke, she could feel him drifting away like sand on the wind. He was gone, and she snatched her bag back up. There was a pit in her stomach as she dragged her goods behind her, walking through the space he had been standing in just moments before. Rey was scared, but she didn’t know why.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, look at that, another update. I'm really plowing through this, aren't I? As some of you predicted, this is gonna start getting dark, so hold on to your hats. It has also occurred to me that there was some formatting error in the previous chapter, the italics didn't transfer, and it has been fixed.

“Can we play Sabacc again?” Rey groaned from the floor of Ben’s room, “you beat me last time, but I’m almost _sure_ you cheated.” She was on her back, gazing up toward the ceiling, arms spread wide at her sides. The soft golden rays that danced in from the window bathed her with a comforting warmth. Despite even her best efforts for taking up as much space as possible, she was still partially cast in Ben’s long shadow.

He didn’t answer her, shoulders hunched over his desk, still working intently on some project he wouldn’t let her see. She could only assume it was the same one, night after night, but she didn’t really have any way of knowing. Rey had tried peeking on numerous occasions, but he would always slip it away or cover her view with the broad width of his body.

“C’mooooon,” the fourteen-year-old pleaded, dragging out the word for as long as she could stand it, squeezing her eyes shut in some mock agony, “I’m boooooored.”

“You used to like being in my dreams,” Ben said then, pushing away from his desk to turn and look at her. There was a fondness in his voice, but a tinge of sadness too. It seemed to have settled there over the years, and Rey wasn’t sure if it would ever leave him. “Besides, I won Sabacc fair and square, like I _always_ do, because _I_ am a grown man, and _you_ are just a _child_.” Even with the sharp edge to his words, Rey could tell he was teasing, a small smile deepening into his cheeks.

“A _teenager_ now,” Rey emphasized, sticking her tongue out at him. Ben ticked up an eyebrow in response.

“Barely,” he scoffed.

“So you’ll give me a rematch?” Rey asked expectantly, rolling onto her stomach and pushing herself up on her elbows to stare at him.

“Not tonight, kid” Ben sighed, raking one of his giant hands through his dark locks, “I’m a little busy at the moment.”

“Why are you always _busy_ when you’re _dreaming?_ ” Rey questioned, an exasperated grumble rolling through her words.

“Dreams are as good a time to get stuff done as any,” Ben answered quickly, already turned from her, as if he himself had been told the same thing many times before.

“Okay,” Rey puffed, having given up. She accepted the explanation, even if it seemed ridiculous to her. Ben was strange, but that was what made him, well— _Ben._ She picked herself up off the floor and rolled onto his bed. “So what if I tell you a story, and you just listen while you do—whatever it is you’re doing,” she offered, hand spinning up in the air in search of the right words.

“I’m an adult, I don’t need a bedtime story,” he quipped back, focused intently at his task.

“But you _have_ had trouble sleeping lately,” Rey reasoned. Something she said must have settled wrong with Ben, because suddenly his back straightened, and his hands curled into hard fists.

“And how would you know that?” He replied, tongue dripping with the bitter words, so vile she could taste them on the air.

“It’s been a while,” Rey explained cautiously, voice low, “since you met me in a dream. Nearly a month.” Ben’s posture softened, and Rey sighed in relief. He was getting more and more tired lately, more and more angry. She still saw him during the day, but the nights were becoming fewer and far between. It would be easier, she figured, if they never met again at all. Talking to him was like walking through mine fields some days. Then again, the thought of being _alone_ curled her insides. “I figured it was because you’ve had trouble sleeping. I just thought—” she trailed off.

“You’re right, you’re right,” Ben sighed, the tension melting from his hands, “go ahead, tell me the story.”

“Well,” she began, picking a spot on the ceiling to gaze at as she pulled the pieces of the story together in her mind, “my dad used tell me this one before I went to bed. The legend of the Jedi. I’m no good at telling stories, but it was always my favorite.”

“Mmm,” Ben hummed, _that so_ , he seemed to say. It was only a vague indication that he was paying any attention, but Rey took it as a sign to continue.

“He said that they were knights—the Jedi. They had bright colored laser swords, and it was their job to protect the galaxy from evil. There was a war—a great big war throughout the galaxy between the empire and the rebellion. Deeper than that, though, beneath the surface of all that fighting, was a war between the knights, and the evil Darth Vader,” Rey didn’t notice Ben’s breathing still, too caught up in her thoughts, “Luke Skywalker met him in battle, alongside a beautiful princess and the great smuggler Han Solo.”

“That’s enough,” Ben mumbled, too quiet for Rey to hear. Or maybe it was loud enough, maybe she was just too caught up in the memories of her father to notice.

She continued, “Luke struck Darth Vader down with a great slash of his sword, defeating the evil and bringing light to the galaxy. They were heroes—legends—”

“I said, that’s enough!” Ben yelled, standing up so quickly that his chair toppled out from underneath him. “I will never understand why I’m doomed to babysit _you_ for the rest of eternity,” he seethed. His eyes were dark, almost red against the light.

 _Pools of blood,_ the thought shot through Rey, and she scrambled up from where she was sitting, alarmed and afraid. She pressed herself up against the wall, eyes searching for something, anything to fight back with as he approached. She could see herself in the reflection of his eyes, the fear, the cowardice. Just as the dream began to slip away, she watched Ben crumple to the ground on his knees, head in his hands.

“I’m sorry,” she heard him sob, choked, guttural sounds wrecking through him, “I didn’t mean to scare you, I’m sorry.”

Rey saw the future for the first time that night, flashing before her like an electrical storm. It was Ben, bathed in a flickering red light, eyes hard. He had a long scar that ran down the side of his face, and he was looking right at her, features shadowed and twisted by the unyielding weight of time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the story Rey tells Ben, there's obviously quite a few errors--I know. I figured a girl recounting a story her father had told her (probably with incorrect information himself) when she was just a child would be bound to get quite a few things wrong. Once again, thanks for reading. Feel free to comment, I love hearing what you all have to say.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, another update. Dark times ahead indeed! Thank you so much for your comments, and I hope you enjoy.

They didn’t talk for a long time after that night. For months, Ben would stand silent at the edge of her vision, mouth a thin red line, staring at her as if he were willing her to speak—to say anything at all. No matter how hard Rey tried to shut him out, to ignore his presence, he’d still be there, just off to the side, just barely out of reach. Even on nights where she woke to his bedroom, she’d just lay there silently, waiting for the moment to pass, to eb back into wakefulness. She couldn’t bring herself to look at him, all she saw anymore were irises like pools of blood and the ghost of a scar running across his face.

Rey was haunted by it—that night, what she had seen. It was a sickening realization that crawled up her spine and took residence in the back of her mind— _she was afraid of him._ It settled there, a cold, dark thing, whispering to her from the shadows. There was something else there too—something _unrecognizable_. It had been there all along, just now inching its way into the forefront of her consciousness like a deep, black fog.

*

“One-half portion,” Unkar Plutt crooned, his deep voice sounding more like a growl than anything else. Rey looked down at the parts she had brought to him: a near spotless compressor that she had scrubbed clean, her fingers still raw from it, the fuel injector she had pried from the remaining pieces of a battered x-wing, a picked apart motherboard that looked worse for wear, but would still sell easy to the right buyer, and a large coil of wiring she had stripped from an old cruiser.

“This would have been worth five portions _at least_ just last week,” Rey protested, furrowing her brow and crossing her arms. The line behind her grumbled impatiently to each other.

“Well _now_ ,” Plutt muttered, his fat Crolute hand slapping the offer down on the counter, “it’s one-half portion.” Usually Rey would take the bad offer and walk. It wasn’t worth fighting over with Plutt, she had no power here. Even if she did fight him on it, he’d probably just send his goons to drag her away. Then she’d be down the parts and the half portion he’d offered. Her hand hovered over the portion for a moment, considering.

“I can’t survive like this,” Rey breathed, returning her had to her side and digging her heels into the ground, “I _need_ more. This is _worth_ more.”

“Silly girl,” he chuckled, beady eyes glaring down at her, “what are you gonna do about it?” His hot breath wafted over her as he drew himself in close to meet her defiant eyes.

“I _need_ more,” she insisted again, hands clutched in tight fists. Plutt made a quick chortle of a sound, swinging his head back. She didn’t notice at first that he was choking. Rey had just assumed he was laughing at her again in his same broken cackle. But soon, the sputtering turned into desperate gasps for air. She moved suddenly, lurching forward to help, when Plutt finally took in a ragged breath. He looked at her, still sucking in air, before silently sliding another half portion across the counter. His gaze was a mix of anger and something else. _Fear_ , a voice whispered inside of her, _he’s afraid of you._ She took the portion without protest and left. The remaining members of the line stare at her wearily as she went.

Rey had just turned hard on her heel when she saw Ben watching on.

“You need to be more careful, little light” he told her. His voice was rough as if his throat had been scraped raw. His entire being seemed duller than usual, as if the color had been drained out of him. His hair fell flat around his face, and his shoulders dipped with the weight of some unseen burden.

“Why should I listen to you?” Rey fumed, jaw clenched at her nickname. It was an endearment he used only on the rarest of occasions. _Get it?_ She could almost hear him say, _Rey—ray._ She turned away from him and began stomping back toward her home.

“I’m sorry,” Ben croaked, voice cracking between syllables like holo static. “You’re better than me,” he said, imploring gaze trained on her, “and you need to be careful.”

“Or what?” She questioned. It dripped like venom from her mouth. She had learned how to protect herself in the desert. All the small things here had to know how to bite back when threatened. But she thought about Plutt gasping, of her tight fist, and an uneasy feeling bloomed inside of her.

“I should have asked you to join me,” Ben said instead, avoiding the question, “I should have let him teach you too—but I was afraid. You wouldn’t have come, anyways. You’re too busy waiting. You’ve been waiting for them all this time.”

“Teach me what?” Rey asked, confusion marring her features. She had stopped walking now and was standing in front of him, “Your religion?”

Ben shook his head, the movement stiff, “it doesn’t matter anymore,” and then, as if haunted, “be careful of the things that speak to you from the dark.”

The anger washed out of Rey like stepping into a vat of cold water. _It talks to me sometimes—whispers in the back of my mind…_ Ben had tried to tell her once. She didn’t understand then; she didn’t understand now, either. But she felt the shadow stir in the back of her mind, and she shut her eyes against it, tried to ignore the way it called to her. When she opened them again, Ben was gone. Rey walked back to the AT-AT with nothing but questions, and a single portion clutched tightly in her hand.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I just want to start this chapter off by saying I'm sorry. I've had this one written for a while now, but it was pretty painful to write, and I can only imagine how it'll hurt to read. I promise there are bright days ahead, we just have to push through the pain and suffering first. Thank you all for the amazing support on the last couple of chapters, I really appreciate hearing what you think.

There was a chasm inside of Ben Solo. It pulled him from both sides, splitting him open to his core, tearing him apart as it ripped through his brain, through his very soul. He carried the weight of the past with him in names—of great Jedi, of heroes of the rebellion: Kenobi, Solo, Organa, Skywalker. The light side was a legacy he could not live up to, Ben knew. More and more it became a fading glow in the distance that he couldn’t reach no matter how hard he tried. The dark called to him too often, too clearly from the recesses of his mind to escape his true destiny.

He could see it in the eyes of his uncle—a cold sort of fear that looked more like recognition there, as if Master Luke had already resigned himself to accepting the truth; Ben always had too much of his grandfather in him, too much of his same stubbornness and passion and _anger_ with the world that boiled low in his stomach and churned dull heat through his veins. And well, wasn’t that the reason he was brought to Luke at all?

He saw it in his mother, too, in the days before she sent him away. _He can teach you,_ she had promised him, _he can help you find the way back to the light_. Leia had placed an open palm on Ben’s shoulder, and he flinched away as if struck. Rage had bit into him like a hot knife through his spine. He never wanted this—any of it. _I hate you,_ he ground out between his teeth. Only just a child then, angry at the world, at his mother, at _fate_. When she looked at him, it was like she was seeing through him, into the past. Her eyes would go dark at the edges, and Ben could almost see the shadows of the ghosts that followed her even then.

Ben had always dreamed of being a pilot like his father. He had spent every free second exploring the halls of the Falcon, riding on Chewie’s tall shoulders, playing copilot with his father. He dreamt of the day his father would finally take him away on his freighter, to some world in some far-off system. It was the only legacy he had ever cared about—making his dad proud. But even that had been stripped away from him the day he was sent to the Jedi temple. Han hadn’t even said goodbye, too afraid of his own son’s power to look him in the eye as he left. Ben had nobody.

He was dreaming now, but alone. The absence of Rey was a tangible thing, a hollow ache that ate at him, rotting away like an abscess. The silence of it was deafening. The room was darker when she wasn’t here. There was no golden light wafting through the window. Instead, shadows fell in the corners like living things. He was slouched over his desk like always, intently working on his list, frantic to call the light back to him. It had gotten shorter over the years as hope left him.

The list was an exercise Luke had taught him on his first night at the temple. Ben was clad in his Padawan robes for the first time, simultaneously enraptured with the strange, sacred place, and scared out of his wits. He thought it was funny how sacred and scared were only a letter changed from each other. Then again, it made sense.

 _The dark tempts us,_ Luke had said, _with the things it thinks we want. It will come to us in whispers, in dreams, it will tell us what we need to hear to follow. That is why you need to decide._

 _Decide what?_ Ben asked. He was sat on the ground, small legs crossed in the position he had just learned, as Luke walked numbly around him in a wide circle. His steps echoed through the large meditation hall they were in and thrummed through Ben’s little frame.

_Decide what is worth staying for._

And so he did. Every night Ben slaved over a list of reasons to stay in the light. A list of reasons to ignore that voice that called to him from the dark. Some nights, like this one, where he woke to his desk, he wrote them down on paper, a strange thing. Calligraphy was one of his hobbies during the slow days at the temple, it only made sense that it would find its way into his dreams as well. Besides, Ben liked to be able to see the words, to feel them scraped into existence. On other nights, where he found himself in a wide-open field, or the shore of an ocean, he would sit in that position he was first taught, legs crossed, and read each line back to himself in his mind.

As the years went on his reasons slipped away. His family stopped visiting so often. Ben had heard Leia whisper to Han one night as he ducked around the corner to listen— _It hurts me to watch myself lose him._ They had already given up. Why shouldn’t he just accept what everyone else seemed to already know? Being a Jedi was a dream he never had, and when he watched the Millennium Falcon fly away for the last time, the only dream he ever really wanted became forever out of reach.

Still, as the shadows breathed down on his neck, as the dark’s whispers grew louder in his ears, he kept writing. Ben’s words spilled down the page in desperate scribbles that felt more like begging, like prayer.

_Rey_

_Rey_

_Rey_

_Rey_

_Rey_

_Rey_

_Rey._

“I’m sorry,” he breathed. The apology seemed to be swallowed by the still quiet of the room as it left him. He glanced down at his page on last time as the dark drew closer, “Be careful, little light.”

When he awoke, Luke Skywalker loomed above him, and Ben’s world came crashing down.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it took me a little longer than usual to post, but I'm getting into some of the meatier bits of plot in the next few chapters and I want to take my time to make sure they turn out right. If it's any consolation, this chapter /is/ about 400 words longer than the last. However, there is still much angst ahead. Take heart, we'll climb out of the dark soon enough. Thank you so much for the wonderful response on the last chapter, and I hope you enjoy.

When the Jedi temple burned down, Rey was scavenging the wreckage of an old tie fighter. Her face was wrapped in sand-toned cloths, and her eyes were covered by dark round goggles. She was just crawling back into the light of day through a crack in the hull when she found Ben on his knees in the sand. Like always, Rey couldn’t see his surroundings, but the familiar flicker of flames danced across his crestfallen face, head hung low, arms dangling down like defeat.

“I didn’t mean for any of this to happen,” Ben choked out. Ash stained his white robes a dusty grey, and a line of black soot slashed down his face. It was eerily familiar to the way he looked in her vision—eyes like pools of blood, red light casting shadows across his scarred face. She was already rushing toward him, stripping the goggles and rags away. That’s when she noticed it, the low hum of something by his side. A sword—it looked as if it were lighting caught in a bottle—the electric sapphire blue like the sky over the meadow in his dreams. A part of her knew what that meant, knew from the bedtimes stories her father told her, knew as if it was glaring at her all along— _Jedi._ But she didn’t have time for realizations, not with the way Ben avoided her gaze as if ashamed.

“Ben?” Rey cried, dropping in front of him and placing her hands on either side of his face. She wanted to cradle him close, this giant mess of a man who seemed diminished in front of her. He was shaking, and Rey could feel the heat on his face from the licking flames as if she were standing in them herself. She tried to push him, to get him to run from whatever danger was on the other side of reality, but he remained an immobile force.

“Just know that I didn’t mean it—I didn’t want this,” he sobbed. The sound was a broken, rasping thing that ripped through him, wrecking his body with tremors. Before Rey could react, could even think, he was dust in her hands. The world spun around her, tilting her axis with a dizzying fear. She thought for a moment about flying over the desert with him, how he flipped them through the sky with an exciting ease, how the horizon seemed to stand vertical at moments, how the sun seemed to set by traveling further into the atmosphere. Her reality was similarly afflicted, but the delighted laugh that once bubbled out of her lungs was missing—and something else, much larger was missing too.

Ben was dead.

*

The days that followed felt more like recovering from the loss of a vital organ than grieving over the death of a friend. Rey couldn’t find it in herself to cry, either, as if the tears would somehow only make it more real. She drifted through her life numbly, stumbling through a dense fog of devastation. Rey couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, rarely even left the AT-AT unless it was to stare at the sunset and hope through the foggy visor of a long-gone pilot. And that was the worst bit, wasn’t it?

She could feel the moment he had been severed from her as clear as a white hot knife tearing through her—an amputation of sorts, his soul being ripped away from hers. And yet she clung on to the thought that she might be wrong, that any night now she’d wake up to the soft glow dancing through his bedroom window, he’d smile at her, and they’d play Sabacc again as if nothing had changed. She would lose the stupid card game like she always had, but she wouldn’t even be the least bit upset, because at least then he’d be _there_ and _alive_ and _whole._ Hope was the only thing she had after her parents left—before Ben. Those lonely months spent sure that one day they’d return and take her away. It was the only thing she had left to hold onto now all over again.

Rey wanted to be angry, to scream and yell and rip the world in half with her bare hands, but she couldn’t. She let the anger simmer low in her gut and die there through gritted teeth and clenched fists. She didn’t deserve to release it, didn’t deserve the easy way out of the pain. She had ignored Ben for months before he died. He had needed her, hadn’t he? He had been at his worst and she had seen it, but Rey hadn’t cared because he had hurt her poor _feelings._ The guilt of that truth stamped out any thought she might have had of catharsis. But in the end, letting go of the anger wasn’t about the guilt, it wasn’t about repenting for her mistakes, it was about what Ben had wanted. The last time he had spoken to her it was to warn her away from the dark—the dark side she knew now—how it called to her as she watched Plutt choke on nothing but air. So, Rey had to try to bite her tongue and swallow the fury that tried to burn her insides, for Ben.

The truth of who he was was something that came to her slowly, as well. After the dust settled and the days drew on, the realization of what all of it meant drifted in as if pulled in to her by the tide. Ben was a Jedi—or training to be with his uncle. All of the cryptic phrases, the religion, the robes— _master—_ it all made sense. Rey felt like a silly, stupid girl for having idolized them so openly in front of him, gushing about magic knights and far-away lands. She felt like such a _child_ when she thought back on it. Rey wondered bitterly how she could have ever expected Ben to think of her as anything else. A hot blush bloomed scarlet across her cheeks and climbed up onto the tips of her ears. Even long gone she was still embarrassed by her young crush. She tried to push the knowledge of the Jedi out of herself, that maybe if she could forget this bit of him, she could forget all of it and finally move on. But the empty ache deep inside of her was all she had left of him, and even on her worst nights, she wouldn’t wish to rid herself of that.

Eventually, Rey was forced to head into town. Even though she had survived on nothing more than mere scraps of food, supplies had run low and she had no other choice than to drag herself out into the light of day. She picked among her things for some parts to take to the outpost. The crap was junk more than anything else—stuff she had tucked away for a rainy day. _It was one hell of a long rainy day._ When Plutt offered her a meager quarter-portion for her finds, she accepted it from him without so much as a word. Even as he inquired where she had been the last couple of weeks, she just shrugged off the question and rounded back toward home. Rey had just cleared the Cantina when she overheard two scrappers talking in low voices just outside.

“Did you hear? The Jedi Temple burned to the ground—” the first, a Teedo wrapped in dark brown rags mumbled to the second, “they say there was no survivors.”

“The Jedi don’t exist,” the other one brushed off, “they’re myths.”

“Don’t exist anymore, anyways,” the first scoffed in return. The pair shared a laugh at the joke, before heading inside.

Rey tried to ignore what the men had said, but she only made it a few paces farther before her legs would carry her no more. She collapsed to the ground in a heap of skin and bones—and cried.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello there! I'm going to be headed back to school pretty soon, so updates might start to slow down /just/ a little. I'll still try my best to get them to you as soon as possible, but bear with me. Also also, the next chapter or two is pretty much just regurgitated Force Awakens plot, so I apologize. I tried to make it as interesting as possible while still giving you the info needed to continue. Don't worry, we'll be back to Rey/Ben goodness in the next little bit. Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy.

Rey sat propped up against one foot of the AT-AT, lazily twirling her finger through the air as a thin line of sand spiraled above it in tight coils. She was nineteen now, still stranded in the desert of Jakku, cut off from the rest of the universe. While she hadn’t learned many other tricks of the force, she had been able to channel her energy into something simple like levitating grains of sand. Still—Rey was no Jedi. The years that followed in the wake of _his_ death were torturous, but she had finally learned to fully adapt to being well and truly alone.

Rey let the sand drift back to the ground before she continued to munch at her foodstuffs. They tasted, as always, of chalky polystarch and they stuck to the inside of her mouth, but she didn’t know any different. After swallowing down a few more bites, Rey set her dish to the side and slid off her fighter helmet. She was comfortable enough, as of late, having come into a great find just on the other side of the ridge. She had stocked up enough portions for a month from the abandoned freighter she’d uncovered and stripped for parts. Enough that she could let herself _eat_ and not worry for once in her life about having enough to make it by. The pangs that usually twisted her intestines into tight knots were blissfully absent, and Rey took a deep breath in to appreciate the freedom of it—a momentary release from absolute desperation.

It was there, gazing off into the distance, that she saw the blurry phantom of a droid being snatched up by another scavenger. Unlike the many droids she’d picked apart, however, this one was fully operational, whirring about even as the thing took it up in a wide net. The need for action thrummed somewhere deep inside of Rey, and she quickly took up her staff an ran off toward the figures.

“Hey!” She called out, swinging her staff toward the scavenger, “let him go!” The droid, a BB-8 unit, beeped excitedly in response.

The scavenger gave a few heartless swats toward Rey and only grumbled as she knelt down to cut away the netting that had held the droid captive.

“There ya go,” she told him once he was free, “gotta be careful around these parts.”

The scavenger road off with a frustrated shake of his head, but Rey paid him no mind.

“What are you doing out here all alone?” She asked the droid, still kneeling to study him. She spotted a crooked antenna and straightened it as he beeped his response.

“Looking for your _master_?” She mused, “well that way is the sinking fields, so you’ll want to steer clear of them,” she directed, waiving an arm vaguely toward where she knew the bubbling pits of sand were. “And if you head back the way you came,” she continued, “you’ll probably get caught in another net. Town is in that direction,” she finished, giving a final point toward the outpost, “good luck.” She reattached his antenna and gave him an encouraging pat before standing up and turning back toward home. Only a few strides in and Rey could hear the spinning gears of the droid following her, beeping in binary as it trailed closely behind.

“Don’t follow _me,”_ she sighed, exasperation leaking into her voice, “town is _that way._ ” She thrust out her staff for emphasis.

The droid let out a stream of stubborn beeps in response.

“ _Fine,_ ” Rey huffed, “but if we’re going all the way to the outpost, let me at least grab some things first.”

*

“One-half portion,” Unkar Plutt growled, throat bobbing. Rey had picked up a few parts she had been planning on exchanging sometime later in the week and had just slid them across the counter. BB-8 waited patiently at her side.

“But these would have been worth _five_ just last week,” Rey protested. It was always the same with Plutt, and she wondered why she even bothered acknowledging it anymore. Parts were _always_ worth more than he bothered giving. Unlike that first time, though, where the anger crawled up out of throat and had left the man choking as if being suffocated by an invisible hand, she now bit her tongue. She couldn’t even bring herself to think of _his_ name anymore, had tried to wall it from her mind as if that could protect her from the pain of _his_ memory, but it was a naïve attempt at best. Still, _he_ had warned her off her anger, and Rey was determined to at least do that.

Plutt leaned over the edge of the counter for a second, beady eyes studying the orange BB-8 unit at her side, “I’ll give you 60 for the droid,” he declared before pouring a mess of green ration packets out in front of her. The pile was more than she had ever seen at once, and her eyes ate them up greedily. Her hands stretched out over the mess, ready to push them into her satchel, when she glanced back down at the droid. She thought for a long second before taking a single half-portion from the pile.

“The droid isn’t for sale,” she said simply, before heading off.

The next series of events happened in a flurry of color and sound, and Rey probably wouldn’t ever be able to coherently recall what happened in that span of time. One minute, she was tackling a man wearing a leather pilot’s jacket, and the next, she was running for her life as imperial fighters shot down at her from above. She flew the old freighter she had snatched up, one of Unkar Plutt’s grounded pieces of junk, with surprising ease for a girl whose only flight lessons came from scavenging the insides of crashed ships and dreams. And while the screeching fighters and their perilous darts through graveyards of imperial cruisers would only be a blur when she looked back, years from now, the sight of finally hitting the edge of atmosphere—the blue sky fading into black—would be seared into her mind for the rest of her life. It wasn’t until Jakku was merely a sandy marble in the distance, tucked between slices of starlight, that she finally let herself breathe.

Finn, the resistance fighter, the man in the pilot’s jacket she had none too gracefully chased through the various booths of the outpost, had just climbed up out of the gunner seat and into the main quarters. Rey set the old ramshackle freighter they had commandeered on autopilot, but where they were headed, she had no idea. From the look on Finn’s face, he wasn’t sure either.

“What do you have that’s so important?” Rey asked the droid. Finn sent a hard glare over the back of Rey’s shoulder toward the round thing, and it beeped reluctantly in response.

“ _A map to Luke Skywalker?_ ” Rey croaked. “ _The Jedi, Luke Skywalker?”_ She felt suddenly as if she had been shot by one of the tie-fighters that had streaked past them. The air left her lungs and her world faded at the edges with tunnel vision. Just then, a puzzle piece of blue star map flashed up in the air in front of her, and Rey collapsed to her knees.

“Are you okay?” Finn asked, eyes flashing concern as he placed a worried hand on her shoulder.

“Luke Skywalker is dead,” she said numbly, her hollow gaze seeing the red fire that had streaked across _his_ face, “the Jedi Temple burned to the ground. There was _no_ survivors.”

 _He survived,_ she translated from BB-8’s chatter, and something inside of Rey slid into place. This man, this legend, was _there_ when _he_ died _._ He _knew him_. If finding Luke could help make _his_ death mean something, well damnit, she would scour the entire galaxy to do it. Rey had just gritted her teeth with this new-found determination when the ship lurched back.

They were caught in a tractor beam.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhh finally an update! School just started back up so these are probably going to be a little slower from now on, but take heart, I am still writing. You should expect to see a new chapter perhaps once a week. I appreciate the patience, and I hope you enjoy!

Rey considered for a moment the entirely possible explanation that maybe she was still asleep. It seemed that in the last few hours, her entire childhood fantasies had become a reality. After being taken aboard a ship, Finn and Rey had decided to hide underneath some of the floor panels, only to be found by none other than—well, her childhood idol.

“You’re _the_ Han Solo?” She gaped, jaw hanging and eyes wide with wonder. Even after all of the stories, she still couldn’t believe that the man before her was actually real. He was a _legend,_ the kind of man that smugglers would tell stories about to anyone who would listen. _I saw Han Solo once on Endor,_ one would claim over their cup of crystalmead. The others would scoff with disdain and brush off the comment as a mere fisherman’s tale, but would still lean in to listen as they told it.

“The rebel hero?” Finn asked, brown scrunched in confusion. His eyes darted from the armed Wookie to the old man, looking to the word as if he wanted to disappear.

“No—well yes,” she caught herself, “but the _smuggler_ too.” Her eyes were alight for the first time in years, filled with stars just like the dreamy nights where she would tell _him_ stories about the myth of Han Solo as he listened on, tight lipped and feigning annoyance—or at least that’s what Rey had always told herself.

“This is my ship,” Han grumbled back, “I’ve been looking for it for years, how did you find it?” He brushed past Rey and headed toward the cockpit.

“Wait this—” Rey stuttered, realization spreading across her face, “this is _the Millennium Falcon?_ The ship that made the Kessel Run in only fourteen parsecs?” Han was only half listening as he checked over his long-lost possession.

“It was twelve,” he called back over his shoulder before settling back down in the pilot’s chair.

“You need to come with us!” Rey demanded, heading into the cockpit herself.

Han’s eyebrow ticked up at her statement, “Where would we be going and why would I want to tag along?” his eyes fell on the newly applied compressor, “and what idiot messed with my ship?”

“We’re headed to the rebel base—” Rey breathed, sliding down into the co-pilots chair. The Wookie, Chewbacca, gave a hearty Shyriiwook laugh as a result.

“Shut up,” Han called back as the Wookie carried on before he turned his attention back to Rey, “I can’t go back there,” he groaned, still fumbling with wires, “Leia wouldn’t want to see me.”

“But we’re carrying a map to _Luke Skywalker,_ ” she said, voice hushed as if the empty space around them might be full of listening ears.

“You know where Luke is?” Han questioned, turned to face her now.

“The droid does, we were going to deliver him to the rebel base—only problem here is Finn doesn’t really know where that is—” she trailed off.

“Look,” Han said, voice flat, “I can’t take you to the base, but I will point you toward the coordinates of a place that can give you a clean transport.”

“Clean?” Rey asked, confusion and disappointment marring her features.

“This thing can be seen by tracers easier than the light from a hololamp in a pitch-black room,” Han chuckled, but the sound caught in his throat as two ships dropped out of hyperspace in front of them. “Crap,” he grumbled, flipping some switches, “we need to go—now. Hold on back there!” He called back to Chewbacca and Finn.

“What’s going on?” Rey asked, but before she got her answer she was lurched backwards as lines of starlight filled her view.

“Looks like I’ll be showing you to Maz myself after all,” He replied simply, “I owe those guys some money, and I don’t really have the funds to front at the moment.”

*

When Rey saw Takodana for the first time, her heart stopped cold in her chest. There was more green in the view from the Falcon than she had ever seen in her entire life. Even when she sat in the forest of _his_ dreams, she hadn’t quite believed that something so _alive_ could even exist. The leaves rustled with furious whispers as the ship dipped in low to land. Rey wondered as the Falcon hit ground if they were speaking to her.

Rey, Finn, and the droid followed steps behind Han as he strode into the castle before them. The place towered above the landscape and was forged from a dark grey stone that reminded Rey of the inner walls of an imperial cruiser. The place was bustling with people, far busier than any cantina she had seen on Jakku, and in that moment she longed for home. She had waited over a decade for her family to return, and what if they did now that she was gone? She began to doubt herself—what could she, a silly girl do to help the resistance? Surely they wouldn’t just let her go off and find Luke Skywalker on her own. Even if they did, he’d probably be far less interested in entertaining her questions than of saving the galaxy. Rey was dragged out of her thoughts by the loud croon of a strange old woman wearing thick, round lenses.

“Han Solo!” The woman exclaimed as she climbed atop the counter in front of her,

loud enough that the whole place stopped to get a peek at them.

“Maz,” Han greeted with a nod at a significantly more reasonable volume.

“Where’s my husband?” She teased in return, straining to get a good look behind him.

“Chewie had to check on the ship,” Han offered lamely, throwing her a shrug of apology in consolation.

“Mmm,” she grumbled back, “I like that Wookie. Anyways, what can I do for you?”

After some discussion on where they could find a ship to take them to the rebel base, Rey felt a strange pull. Almost like the whispering leaves from the trees outside. It was as if the universe was speaking to her, just quiet enough that she couldn’t make out the words. She got up in a trance, determined to find the source of the sound. Maybe if she got close enough, she’d be able to _hear._ Her wandering took her into the back of a long hallway, far away from the hustle and bustle upstairs. A dusty yellow daylight filtered in from a window in a side room, and she entered, still pulled by some invisible voice. There was an old, leather case propped up, and she carefully tugged it open.

She froze.

Sitting there, nestled among a bolt of cloth, was something she recognized all too well. _A lightsaber._ The voices got ever louder, and her mind began to spin. Her vision tunneled so that all she saw was it sitting there. The silver hilt looked worn with use, and she could almost see where the fingertips of its former owner had rubbed grooves into the metal. She couldn’t resist its pull and she reached out to touch it.

Her vision flashed wildly. She was falling—no running down an endless hallway, dark metal walls and harsh white lights beating down. There was screaming, blood, Rey was overwhelmed with a feeling of utter helplessness that was not her own and then—a creature in a black mask, red light humming from the hilt of his saber. It reminded her, in that moment, his face close enough that she could see her reflection in the glossy black, of another vision she had had many years ago. Of _him,_ eyes like pools of blood, scar screeching down his face, red light washing over everything.

When she snapped back to reality, she dropped the thing as if burned. Maz was standing right behind her.

“That was Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber,” she said softly, picking up the saber from the floor, “and his father’s before him. It is yours now, it calls to you.”

“I’m never touching that thing again,” Rey gritted out through ragged gasps of air, still reeling from what she had just seen.

“Come here child, let me look at you,” Maz soothed, motioning for Rey to kneel. Rey bent down to look her in the eyes. “Not everything that is lost is gone,” she said, gesturing to the saber, “this lightsaber, for example, left its owner long ago, but it still existed, just out of reach. Many things are like that too—if only we reach a little farther, we might find them again.”

“I don’t understand,” Rey stuttered, searching Maz’s wise old eyes for some sort of answer.

“The belonging you seek is not behind you,” she began, pressing the lightsaber back into Rey’s palms, “it is ahead.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because I am the loving and merciful god of this fanfiction, I have given you the update you have all been waiting for, much faster than I originally anticipated. However, that also comes with the take away that a future chapter will probably be a longer wait, but eh, beggars can't be choosers. Thank you all for the amazing responses so far. I hope you enjoy!

“Sir, we have word that the rebel droid containing the location of Luke Skywalker is on Takodana—General Hux has ordered an attack on the area and demanded we retrieve the droid at all costs,” the man reported, outfitted in designated First Order attire.

“Perfect,” Kylo Ren hissed in return, back to the officer as he gazed out the cruiser window. Starlight glinted off his mask as he turned. “Ready my transport,” he ordered, already in a half stride towards the door.

“Actually, sir,” the officer interrupted, and Kylo Ren froze in place, muscles tight with irritation, “Supreme Leader Snoke has requested an audience with you.”

“He wishes to speak with me?” He clarified, invisible eyes glaring down at the man through his dark façade.

“Correct, in the throne room,” the man replied. Kylo Ren gave him a curt nod of dismissal before following him out the door.

The throne room was located far from the ship’s main operations, tucked away at the end of a long corridor. The room itself opened up through a tall door and into a dark, cavern like room that seemed to swallow up all who entered. As Kylo Ren followed the path to the middle of the room, a flickering hologram of the Supreme Leader burst to life in the great chair before him. Kylo Ren bowed in greeting.

“Why am I not to join the attack of the rebel scum?” He inquired as he pulled his long, broad body back up into a standing position, “I have headed all previous ground attacks of this operation to locate Luke Skywalker.”

“I have more important matters to discuss with you, young apprentice,” Snoke answered, voice rumbling out of him so low it shook the ground itself, h is twisted face curled in some unrecognizable expression.

“Sir?” Kylo Ren acknowledged, waiting for the man to continue.

“Protecting the droid is a girl strong in the light. You have not yet finished your oath to the Sith and are too easily persuaded by the lies and limitations of the Jedi,” he growled, leaning forward in his chair. His huge stature seemed to tower over where Kylo Ren still stood in the middle of the room.

“No mere rebel scum could tempt me, master,” he vowed in return, head hung low in shame but fists clenched in stoic determination, “by the grace of your training—I will not be seduced.”

*

Rey was running.

As soon as Maz had pressed Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber into her hands, explosions had rattled the foundation. The First Order, it seemed, had discovered the location of the droid. Luckily enough for her, the Rebels had also been alerted to their location. Logically, all she had to do was escape with BB-8 long enough that the First Order would leave, and then she could hand off the map to the Rebels. In practice, it wasn’t nearly so simple.

Her chest heaved with exertion as she sprinted through the green growth around her. Rocks jutted out from the ground at odd angles, and she had to jump from one foot to the next to avoid falling on her face. At this point, she had no idea where BB-8 even was, just that she had urged him onward when it became clear that he was a much faster runner than she was. She stopped for half a moment to listen to the near silence around her, filled only by the soft breeze rustling through the trees and the dull sound of blaster fire in the distance, hoping that if she strained her ears she might be able to hear the whirring of gears and know which direction to follow. It was then that she heard the sound of boots breaking branches. She turned slowly, unlit lightsaber in hand, toward the sound. There stood a man dressed in all black, face covered by a dark mask, war club clutched at his side.

“Where’s the droid?” he hissed, voice coming out metallic and cold.

“You can’t have him,” Rey replied, lighting the saber and planting her feet. She didn’t really have any clue what she was doing, but fear and adrenaline pumped through her, lighting a fire in her veins, and all she knew how to do was fight back. The man, _creature,_ in front of her, face full of tubes, laughed at her—a deep, twisted thing that echoed strangely between the trees.

“I am Ushar, a Knight of Ren,” he declared, voice steady, “and a silly little girl playing with things she doesn’t understand cannot defeat the likes of me.”

Rey let out a guttural scream then and charged at him, anger electric and thrumming through her much like the hum of the saber lifted high above her head. She was only a foot away when she froze in place, unable to move. All she could do was watch as he swung the war club at her head in a brutal, long stroke that cut through the air, but he stopped suddenly, dropping the weapon to his side.

“Oh, _oh,”_ he breathed, coming to some unseen revelation, “well that’s just _disappointing._ This would have been _so much fun.”_ Rey struggled in place, grunting in an effort to move even an inch, to run away.

“You’ve _seen_ it, haven’t you? The map to Skywalker?” Ushar asked, voice far away as if he wasn’t really talking to her, but through her. “Your mind is well guarded,” he mused, metallic voice clanging hollow like sound reverberating through a long, iron pipe, “I won’t be able to tear it from you, but Kylo Ren could.” He nodded to himself, as if having decided something, before waiving his free hand in front of her face.

The world faded to black around her.

*

When Rey awoke, she was strapped to a chair, arms and legs bound, in a dark, metal room. She pulled against the restraints, struggling in an attempt to break free, to no avail. She slumped against the chair, physically drained and mentally exhausted. To think just yesterday she was back on Jakku, scavenging for parts in an old Imperial Cruiser—and now, it seemed, she was on one. She took a moment to glance around the room—bright, glaring white lights beat down from between panels of black metal, it reminded her, suddenly, of the long hallway she had been unable to escape in her vision.

As if to confirm her thoughts, the door hissed open and a tall, masked figure strode in. It was him, the man she had seen inches from her face. The dread that had pooled in her then was flooding back into her now. Her heart began to race in a fluttered sort of panic, her aching body groaning in protest. He turned to her then, ominous black mask and all, and she slammed her eyes shut, afraid of what was to come. Would he torture her? Force the map out of her? The man who had captured her had been able to hold her still in mid-air, what mysterious powers could _this_ one have? But even as she steeled herself against whatever pain was about the course through her, nothing came. She heard the sound of gasping inhale through voice modulator and opened her eyes just in time to watch the man fall to his knees in front of her.

“I’m sorry,” he choked out, words muddled as he dropped his head into his hands. And didn’t that remind her of—wasn’t that just what—His helmet clicked open as he pulled it from his head, eyes still downcast, dark hair hiding his gaze. She knew the broad line of those shoulders, didn’t she? She knew the set of that jaw, the mop of that hair. The answer came to her slowly, dragging itself out of her letter by letter as a thousand thoughts ripped through her brain. Only one came to the surface, only one claimed a spot on her tongue, pressing itself out between her lips in a breathy whisper.

_“Ben?”_


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I decided to post this one as soon as possible because of how /mean/ that last ending was, but I don't know how much that's going to help you tortured souls. For a little sneak preview of how this is going to go, let's take a look at some of my original ideas for author's notes:  
> 1\. If you thought last chapter was painful, I'm sorry.  
> 2\. Don't worry, it get's worse.  
> 3\. Sorry   
> Alright! Now that you're all well and prepared, welcome to another chapter! Thank you all so much for the amazing response so far, feel free to keep commenting, I love hearing what you think.  
> And remember: it's always darkest before the dawn.

When Ben looked up at her, deep eyes reflecting shame and grief and pleading for forgiveness, Rey was twelve years old again.

*

_“I’m sorry,” Ben’s saying as he kneels over her, eyebrows knitted in further apology, “I shouldn’t have pushed you so hard.” Rey is all scuffed knees and dirt streaked from where she had tumbled, and she’s surprised, for a moment, at how_ stricken _Ben looks. As if his world had gone crumbling down around him as she fell, as if falling wasn’t practically in the name of the game. The two had been playing tag, at her insistence, before he had caught her and sent her head over heels into the green grass meadow of tonight’s imagination. She cocks her head to the side, looking at him through the few loose strands of hair that had fallen into her face, before dusting off the dirt and standing up._

 _“I’m alright,” she assures him, throwing him a big, beaming smile, all toothy grin and cavernous dimples. He matches her, in kind, with a sort of lopsided grin. It’s about as close to a real smile that he ever gets, and the tension that had been bunched in between his shoulders slides away. “I don’t think you can really get hurt in dreams,” she says as a comfort more than anything else—it_ had _kind of hurt—but his eyes go dark and his face falls grim and she wonders, suddenly, if she had said everything wrong. He’s looking through her, dazed by some past she cannot attempt to see in the inky pools of his irises, and she asks herself if it’s possible to be haunted by things other than ghosts_. _He doesn’t talk for a long time, sitting there like that, half hung over still, as if caught like a crumpled brown leaf on the wind._

_When the dream fades away, she feels as hollow as his eyes._

*

She felt the same, now. As he looked at her, gaze apologizing for something she still couldn’t quite understand, Rey stared through him and into the past. She could see the echoes of the last few years shining against the metal walls of the dark room like hazy heat waves hanging low over the desert, overcome again by the helplessness, the _emptiness_.

“I don’t understand,” is the only thing she could say, and even that rolled around inside of her mouth strangely, taking up too much space. She wanted to cut out her tongue, to never speak again, but it pressed on without her, “I thought you were _dead.”_

“No, no,” Ben began, drawing himself up from the floor, still diminished by the bend in his shoulders, but Rey stopped him before he could explain. Anger bubbled up into her throat and she wanted to scream, to claw at him, to make him feel the _pain_ she had suffered every moment he had been gone. For years, she couldn’t even think his _name_ the grief was too great—and for what? _This?_ So that he could parade around wearing a dark cape? So that he could hide his grief and shame and _guilt_ behind a cold, black mask?

“I have never felt more _alone,_ ” she growled, and the words dropped between them like rocks, leaving behind the dusty taste of ash on her lips.

“I know—” he began, but a scream ripped through her then, shaking the wall with some invisible power.

“ _You couldn’t possibly understand,”_ she bit back, words like venom on her tongue. Her restraints curled away from her body and Ben—no _, Kylo Ren,_ the man he chose to be, the man he chose to be, _without her_ —stumbled backward. He just looked at her numbly, eyes filled with shock and awe at the sheer power of her, burdened by the knowledge that it was him, in the end, that brought her to such fury. It was then that an orange-suited fly-boy stutter-stepped into the open doorway. His dark hair curled around his tanned face which was wet with beads of sweat that glistened like shards of crystal in the light, and his warm eyes locked with Rey’s.

“Are you Rey?” He asked, chest heaving. His panicked gaze flickered over to Kylo Ren, unmasked and still frozen in place, but completely unrecognizable. His hand tightened around his blaster.

She only nodded in response.

“Look, we got a whole team on this thing looking for you,” he explained through gasps of air, “and if we’re gonna go, we gotta go _now.”_

Rey scrambled up, suddenly aware that she was on the _enemy’s_ ship and that the Rebellion had deemed her important enough to bother saving. She held out her hand and called Luke’s Lightsaber, which had been placed in the corner of the room once it was confiscated from her, back into her waiting palm. She turned hard on her heel and rushed out of the room without a word, without even a glance toward the shadow of a man behind her.

“Poe Dameron,” he introduced himself as they streaked down the hall.

“Rey,” she gasped back.

It felt strange, Rey thought, running from the one thing she had wished for years to find again. The only reason she was even here—was even looking for Luke Skywalker in the first place—was to make Ben’s death _mean_ something, was to find answers, _closure._ She let out a bitter scoff as she rounded the next corner, lightsaber clutched in her hand. She had nothing, anymore. Whoever the man was in that room was not the man she had missed each and every sleepless night, was not the man she longed to see out of the corner of her vision every time her eyes were open, was not the man she _knew_ by the twist of his smile or the glint in his eye. She had lost him four years ago in the desert sands of Jakku, in the burning blaze of the Jedi Temple, in the space between where she always was and where she always wished she could be.

*

Kylo Ren stood still as they ran, entranced by everything that had transpired. The way she had looked at him, eyes full of fear and hate and so much _anger._ He had done that, hadn’t he? He had stoked his little light into a raging fire that she couldn’t hope to contain. _Be careful,_ he had told her once, but the truth sunk into his bones like an ache—he was always going to be the one to ruin her.

“When did you grow up?” He whispered under his breath, trying to remember the wide-eyed awe of the little girl he had flown circles with under the endless Jakku sunset of her dreams. The silence of the room didn’t answer, but he knew it. The answer rattled around inside of his chest like a blaster bolt, tearing through everything in its path. _She grew up when you left her._


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Right back at it with another update. I am gonna warn you, this chapter is a /bit/ of a mess. We'll make it through it together, I promise. Thank you all again for the amazing response to the last couple of chapters, I'm glad you're enjoying it! As you can see, we are nearing the end (even though I have changed the total chapters for this fic at least 10 times and might again), so I hope you like how it all wraps up.

When Starkiller Base exploded, lit to ruin by Han Solo’s blasts, Rey watched numbly at a distance. After Poe had retrieved her from the interrogation room, the pair ran to where Han, Chewie, and Finn had set up explosives. The plan, they had explained, was to destroy the thing from the inside. The Resistance fighters couldn’t break past the base’s defenses to do significant enough damage to put the thing out of commission, so the team had infiltrated Starkiller Base in hopes of finding Rey as well as, ya know, saving the galaxy. The group had escaped, but only narrowly. They hadn’t yet made it to the Falcon when the ground began to shake, and the world split in half.

“We have to go, kid,” Han Solo called out over his shoulder, looking back to where Rey still stood in the snow, her eyes alight with the flickering flames in the distance. The others had gone on some ways ahead, weaving through the tall black trees. It was only her and Han, now, standing out in the cold as the wind whipped around them and the earth fell apart.

Rey nodded and began to follow, but she only got a few feet before she was stopped in her tracks by the sound of another voice screaming out against the dark forest.

“Rey!” He was calling to her, begging her to stay as if he were the child now—as alone and afraid as she had been that night in the cruiser, left with only dust and darkness.

She wanted more than anything to look, to see the flustered man, tousled brown locks and dark eyes and forget about everything. She wanted to run to him and disappear and never have to worry about what could have been. But he had left her then, too, all those years ago. She steeled herself against the sound, told herself that whatever was calling for her now was not the man she used to know. Even as the voice dripped in agony and defeat, even as the echo of it through the trees curled the branches with despair. In that moment, her eyes snapped up to Han’s, his own haunted and searching the distance.

“Ben,” she saw him mouth in a soundless whisper, the word twisted against his lips like regret. She knew that face, didn’t she? She had seen that expression before, hadn’t she?

Rey shook the thought away. She could feel him, Kylo Ren, getting closer. It was a tickle in the back of her mind that she hadn’t felt in so long, and part of her doubted that he could really be gone. Rey yearned to wake up in her sandy AT-AT at fifteen and realize all of it had just been a bad dream. She wanted to curl up on his bed and play Sabacc again as he scoffed at her from his chair. The world rumbled beneath her and she knew she needed to move. This was no dream. Rey remembered the man in her vision, face scarred and eyes wild, and knew, that was who he was meant to be.

“You’re right,” she said simply, pushing herself past the older man. If she didn’t move now, she might never walk again, “we need to go.”

As she made her way farther into the forest, she swore she could still hear the voice on the wind, and it tore through her bones in a single syllable—“ _Please.”_

*

Once they were safely away from the imploding base, Rey took a spare moment to fidget in her chair. The Millennium Falcon was streaking across open space, stars mere lines of light out of the viewpoint. Chewbacca was getting bandaged up from where he had been hit by blaster fire, so Rey had taken the copilot’s chair next to Han. She could hear the Wookie, just down the hall, moaning out in pain, the sound muffled by the door and distance between them.

“Do you know him?” She asked quietly, addressing the air more than the man who sat next to her. Rey didn’t have to elaborate; he knew who she meant. She had seen it out there in the forest, how he was haunted in the same way she was by the ghost in the distance. It was then that she had seen just how old Han Solo really was—hair curled white around his face and deep lines carved like caverns around his eyes.

“He’s my son,” he answered, voice breathy and faraway, and so _tired._ Rey turned to look at him.

“Ben is _your son?_ ” She gaped, not even bothering to stop the name from passing over her tongue. Still, the words escaped her in hushed tones, as if afraid of their own significance. Surprise, shock, and awe spread through her like a cold rush of understanding. If Han Solo was Ben’s father— _Ben Solo_ —than Leia was his mother and, and the man she was searching for— _Luke Skywalker_ —was the uncle she had heard so much about on those easy, golden nights. And wasn’t that just laughable? After all of this time, it was staring her right down the nose and she had just missed it. Hot embarrassment burned at the tips of her ears as she remembered all the times she had gushed over legends that he had always known were very much real—very much his family. As Rey untangled these thoughts in her mind, Han had stopped to stare at her.

“You know his name?” He questioned, a sort of shallow wonder pulling at his features as he cocked his head to the side—and how had she ever _missed_ it? The boy had been so much like his father, hadn’t he? His mannerisms a mirror of the man before her now. His messy mop of hair shadowing a similar silhouette.

“I knew him,” she replied, letting the thought float out on the air without any further explanation. Han seemed to understand. He let it settle there in the silence between them like a secret. And it was one, wasn’t it? The knowledge of who Kylo Ren really used to be?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know! Han lives! So exciting. In my mind it made sense because I think that in this universe, Rey would be the past he was still holding on to, not his father or that childhood, so he would have never killed his father to prove himself to Snoke. And also--he's currently in a lot of emotional distress. But yeah, guess we'll just see how that all works itself out.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a little shorter than usual as of late, but I think it was important to stop it where I did. I hope you all enjoy!

It was a few hours into their journey that Rey finally let herself rest. As soon as her head hit the bench seat of the Falcon, she was asleep.

The dream came to her in lightning hot flashes. Kylo Ren’s scarred face glared down at her, eyes filled with the blazing red light of his blade. His mouth was twisted in a sinister sort of smile that stretched the skin at the corners of his eyes, sharpening them to knifepoints.

“You need a teacher,” he bit out through clenched teeth, his jaw a hard right angle.

The way he stared into her made her feel as if she were really there, as if this had already happened and she was looking at a memory instead of a dream. The tall trees stood black around them against the white snow, running red with blood. The ground shook in violent fury and—

Rey knew this place. She had been there not moments ago. All these years it had stretched out before her in her mind—the look of him in this moment that she’s recalling with such clarity. But this never happened. It never happened, and it never _could happen_ because this place could never exist again. It had crumbled before her. She had watched the world burn. As she realized this, he faded away before her until she was standing alone in the dirtied snow.

It’s then that she woke up in another memory.

 _“Maybe in another world,” Ben’s saying to himself._ And it is him, her Ben. Young and dressed in his white robes, hung over the edge of his desk like he always seemed to be. She remembered this night. It was so many years ago now, she was just a child—he was still _just_ a child. He hadn’t noticed her right away, the presence of her in the room, and she had listened in for a few moments as he mumbled to himself things she couldn’t understand. _“Maybe in another world the dark won’t be my destiny.”_

Then, the dream twisted around her. Ben turned in his chair to look at her, eyes wild, deep angry scar slashing down his face as he lunged at her. Rey stumbled back, horrified. The room seemed to grow dark around them. The golden light drifting in through the window was choked out by some invisible shadow. He sneered at her and she wanted to disappear as she had so many nights before. This was _not_ the night she remembered. And then the whole room stilled. Ben’s scar faded away, and he looked at her as if reaching through time itself.

 _“This is not that world,”_ he said, voice hollow and pleading, arm stretched out to her with an open hand as if he needed her to justify it, to believe in his words when even he couldn’t, “ _that will never be me, I promise.”_

She looked down at his hand, fear thrumming through her, and did not take it.

When she snapped awake for the final time, she could still feel where his fingers had ghosted across the skin of her arm as she left.

*

After the map was completed with the help of R2-D2, another droid, Rey sought out Luke Skywalker alone on Ahch-To. The island she found him on jutted rocky and green out of the churning black sea, pelted by white-foamed waves, a mist from the late-night rains still hanging over the ground. He looked nothing like she had imagined. In her dreams he stood tall and proud—a white knight with crystal eyes and a sharp jaw. The man she met instead reminded her a lot of Han in the moments after fleeing Starkiller base. She stood before him now, arm outstretched with his saber in hand, gazing at the robed man. His hair was wild and grey, his eyes were haunted by some failure he kept buried inside of himself. She wondered, vaguely, if he had ever really been that man in all of the stories.

_I was just a boy back in those days._

Rey heard the whispers inside her as if they had ridden into her on the air, and her eyes snapped up to Luke’s.

“What are you doing here?” He questioned; voice tired as his cybernetic hand curled around the hilt of the blade.

She had practiced this in her head all the way over—what she was going to say when she could finally speak to him. _The Resistance needs you. General Organa wants you to return._ No matter how the words had felt when she spoke them under her breath at the pilot’s chair of the Falcon, they felt strange in her mouth now. It didn’t feel right. Sure, she was here to help the Resistance now, to defeat the creature in the mask. But that was not the reason she came. It felt like years, the weeks it had been since Jakku, but she remember her mission well. There was only one reason she left her home, only one thing that set her out to the stars. She sighed before letting her answer fall out before them.

“I knew Ben Solo.”

The words were not what she expected, not really. As they rolled themselves off of her tongue she was surprised at the sound of her own voice. Rey saw the way Luke studied her, staying silent for a moment so that the only sound was that of the crashing waves and crooning Porgs some way down the side of the mountain. She watched the way questions flitted across his eyes, watched as he sorted them out, one by one in his mind, before deciding on a simple word.

“How?” Luke asked this like he already knew the answer, like he’d known for years and wouldn’t let himself believe it. The shame of the reply she hadn’t yet given was already tugging his brow down further, already deepening the wrinkles of his forehead.

“I was the girl in his dreams.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter? So soon? I know, exciting stuff right? This one was particularly fun to write, so I hope you enjoy it! Thank you all for the wonderful responses on the last chapter!

“He told you about me, didn’t he?” Rey asked, slicing through the tension that reverberated around them. The sound of waves beating against the shore surrounded them like white static. Luke still stood in a stunned silence before her, mouth set in a straight line, the lightsaber clutched in his cybernetic fist glinting in the light.

“Come with me,” he motioned after a moment, starting to walk past her down the mountain, arm wide as an invitation for her to follow, “we should talk.” He was brushing her aside, Rey thought. To him this conversation was something he could deal with by sweeping the past under the rug. Something came over her then, a deep anger she had swallowed down inside of herself, the same broiling fury she had promised never to release.

“No.” The word came out calm and still but shook the rocks around them as if the whole planet was vibrating—and maybe it was. Maybe all of the anger she had buried down inside of herself—all the hurt and pain—was pulsing out of her and into the surface. Luke stopped mid stride and turned to her. “We’re talking now,” Rey demanded, fists clenched at her sides, feet set wide, unmoved.

The tired man took one long look at her, up and down, studying her defiance. He only nodded in return, after the moment had passed, and dragged his bare palm down his face, defeated.

“He told you about me,” she repeated, drawing out the words so thickly she could almost see them on the air in front of her, “ _didn’t he?_ After that first night in his dreams, he came to you. He talked to you about what he had seen. _Didn’t he?”_ Her eyes searched him for some answer. Like maybe if he could just tell her what happened, everything would be right again—not twisted up and wrong like it was now. She could go back to easy nights and glimpses of him out of the corner of her eyes and red cheeks colored in a rosy blush and his not-quite-there smiles and that could be enough. She would take it. She would.

“He said that someone had come to him in a dream, yes,” Luke sighed, the weight of the confession pulling his shoulders down toward the earth, “I told him to tell me if it ever happened again.” He shifted from foot to foot, as if afraid that if he stood still the truth might catch up to him.

“And it did,” Rey spoke. Luke’s blue eyes seemed to churn like the ocean around them as they drew up to meet hers.

“Yes, it did,” he answered, gaze locked with hers.

“And you warned him away from me—he told me that once. What did you say to him?” Rey questioned, the words sharp daggers of accusation as they flew from the tip of her tongue at him. She saw him flinch as if he’d actually been pricked, and she let herself smile at the thought of it.

“I asked him what he wanted most in the world. His absolute deepest desire. It’s a trick, you know? Something the dark side does to lure young Jedi to the shadows. They will offer you anything, anything you’ve ever dreamed of, if only you’d join them. _Strength, power, eternal life,_ anything that might tempt a naive heart,” Luke rambled, his explanation frantic, “it was what they did to my father—tempted him with what he wanted most. I was afraid they were doing it to my nephew too.” He was trying to save himself, she knew, from the consequences of his mistake.

“But what did he say?” Rey asked. Luke paused for a long moment before speaking.

“A friend. He said the only thing he needed was a friend,” he breathed. Rey wanted to collapse, to fall to her knees, to scream and curse and damn the world for what it had done, but she bit hard into the inside of her cheeks and dug her nails into the palms of her hands.

“You told him I wasn’t _real?_ You made him doubt the only thing that was ever really _his?_ He never wanted to be a _Jedi._ He loved _flying._ He told me once he wanted to be just like his father when he was young. He wanted to be a pilot. But no. He was given you and all you did was take the _one thing_ he ever really needed,” Rey growled. The man’s eyes flashed with a similar fury before calming once more. He looked at her, the icy blue waters in his eyes still.

“How was I supposed to know what you were? People don’t just appear in _dreams,_ ” he defended himself, voice rough, “I thought I was _helping him.”_

“He was a child,” Rey scolded.

“He was already too far gone to the dark,” Luke reasoned in return, “that night before the temple burned—I saw his true nature—I almost finished it then, but I couldn’t. It was a moment of weakness—” The words caught in his throat.

“You tried to kill him?” She scoffed.

Luke couldn’t bring himself to contradict it, dropping his eyes away, and Rey knew she was right.

“No wonder he became Kylo Ren,” Rey spat, the name leaving a bitter taste inside of her mouth, “all the people trying to help him never really gave a _damn_ about what he thought. No one even _asked.”_ Rey saw it then, the moment Luke finally let go of any control. He let the anger rise up out of him, laced thick with guilt and shame.

“And where were _you?_ ” he bit back, words cracking against the air like snapping whips, “If he needed you so badly, where were _you_?”

“With him,” Rey hissed, grinding the words out from between clenched teeth, “I was with him, _every night._ ” She saw it the moment the fight finally left him. When the man accepted the depth of his downfall. She took her killing blow then, cruel and not regretting it for a moment as she stamped the sentence out before him, “and you told him I wasn’t _real._ ”


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been far too long since we've gotten to feel any of that hearty REYLO energy we're all here for, so feast on the scraps I have thrown you in this chapter, and have faith that we'll be getting a lot more very soon! Thank you all so much for you're comments, I really enjoy reading them all :)

The universe had a funny way of making Rey swallow her pride in the end.

*

She was meditating when the bond between them opened up again like a live wire. She could feel it hum through her bones. It was like taking in a deep breath of air after holding it for so long. Her eyes were still closed, her legs were still crossed in position, but she felt the moment that he stood before her like two pieces of a puzzle clicking together. She was furious at herself for how _relieved_ it could make her feel, but she bit her lip and stilled her fluttering heart. Luke had taught her how to calm herself after that first day of fire, when she had let the anger flow through her freely. He did not scold her for it, her passion, and she wondered if it was because Luke had recognized the same in Ben, all those years ago, and was determined not to make the same mistake.

When she finally got up the courage to open her eyes, he was already gone. She crashed back into the ground and let out a startled yelp as she landed, head swinging to search the room.

“You need to concentrate,” Luke bellowed as he entered the small cave. His voice ricocheted off of the rock so that is sounded as if it were coming from all around them. Rey could feel it vibrate inside of her chest, and she bowed her head.

“Yes master—” she began, “I was just distracted by—” Rey stopped herself, swallowing the words back down. She had never really talked about it before—what it was like all those years, opening her eyes and seeing _him._ It felt too private, their secret moments of ghost and shadow, and she wasn’t sure how to voice that to Luke now.

“Did you see him?” Luke asked, face softening. Rey cocked her head to the side, surprised. She had told him before that the bond between them had broken after the night the Jedi temple burned down. He had mused over the information for a while, hand scratching at his chin through the rough tangles of his grey beard. _A bond like that can’t be broken, merely hidden out of reach._ He had told her.

“How did you know?” Rey breathed. She felt almost hollow now that she had been reminded of how it was to be with him, to feel his presence butted up right against her own.

“He used to do the same thing, sometimes,” Luke sighed, eyes cast toward some point on the wall, “he would fall out of mediation as if he were startled by something I couldn’t see. He’d talk to the air as if it had substance, and I couldn’t know if he was talking to the dark, if it had crawled up inside of him as his mind opened to the force, or if he was speaking to the girl he was haunted by in his dreams—you,” he finished.

Rey stayed silent, letting the story of Ben from the other side sink in. How had she looked, talking to nothing, she wondered. How many passerby’s shook their heads decidedly, thinking that she had gone mad in the long stretches of dunes?

“He had stopped telling me about it,” Luke mused, “after I warned him that you might not be—” his voice broke then and he dropped his head away, “he stopped talking about seeing you, but I knew it had never really stopped.”

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Rey said, shaking her head and straightening back into position, ready to begin again, “it’s not him, not _really._ I know the Ben I knew is gone.” She shut her eyes tight against the prickle of tears beading up. She would not cry, not over this, she couldn’t. She was already floating above the ground again when Luke walked out. She heard him whisper something half under his breath, and the words swam around her.

“ _No one’s ever really gone.”_

*

As the days went on, they blurred into weeks. Rey trained with Luke most days—one spent jumping over gaps in cliffs as mountainous waves and creatures of the deep crashed against the emptiness beneath her, the next spent in deep thought and meditation, trying to reach out to the voices of those who came before her.

Despite what she thought she had felt, it had been weeks since the bond had opened, and she was beginning to think it had never really opened in the first place. Rey must have imagined it. Connecting with the force felt much the same as talking with Ben always had, thrumming through her with a similar sense of belonging. It was as if acknowledging the string that ran through all things, and perhaps, for a moment, she had thought it was the string between the two of them.

The worst bit of it was, that no matter what she tried to tell herself—that it didn’t matter, that he wasn’t really _Ben_ anymore—she longed for it, to see him again. There was just something _right_ about how it felt, zeroed into him so even her own surroundings began to fade around her. To see him and his stupid face, his strong jaw and lopsided grin just like his father’s. His floppy mess of hair and his deep brown eyes. She wanted to look at him again, to take him in and—her heart flipped over itself and she bit into her cheeks. _No._ She couldn’t think of him like that. He was _Kylo Ren._ Leader of the Knights of Ren. A member of the First Order. He had done terrible things. He was public enemy number one to the Resistance. She couldn’t entertain childish thoughts that maybe, _maybe,_ if she just said something, he’d like her too.

 _“Kriff,”_ she huffed, smashing her staff against the stack of rock she had been training near. It was like the force was _teasing her_ with the taste of him just so that it could take it away, so it could string her out until she was desperate and childish and _kriff._ Could it even do that? It seemed, whether or not it could, it had. Thoughts of him snuck into her daily meditations and moments between sleep. She was never free of him. But did she want to be? 

The answer came to her that night as she warmed herself by the flickering flame of the fire in her hut, blanket pulled up over her shoulders. Rey felt it first, the world shrinking around her so that it was just the room—the sound of rain beating down outside fading to white static. She knew what she would see once she tore her gaze away from the blaze in front of her, and her pulse stumbled in her chest, running its way through her veins, a nervous beat that shook her very bones.

“Rey,” his voice spoke, and the light of the fire snuffed out.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp, this one was an emotional roller coaster. Please stay seated and keep your hands and feet inside of the cart at all times. This is the loooongest chapter yet, so there's plenty to chew on here. Also, you may have noticed I put a handy dandy little question mark by the final chapter count--there will only be a few more, but I'm not quite sure how I'm going to lay them out, so I'm leaving the final count blank for now. Enjoy!

Rey was silent as she looked at Kylo, his face lit only by the cold blue light flooding in through the window. It cast soft shadows underneath his eyes and across the bridge of his nose. It made his whole face seem deeper—cavernous. He looked so _tired_ now, and didn’t they all? Didn’t his father and his uncle and herself if she ever spent the time studying her own reflection to notice? When did simply being become such an exercise of will? When the moment finally came, he spoke first.

“Can you see my surroundings—?” He asked, an echo of a day many years past, and she grit her teeth against the memory. This wasn’t Ben, not really, not anymore. “Because I can’t,” he continued, voice low, deep eyes imploring as they glinted in the moonlight, “just you.”

“Stop it,” she hissed, face drawn in tight, her whole body felt stiff at the sound of Kylo’s voice. She knew what he was trying to do, and she wasn’t going to fall for it, “you’re not him. You’re a _monster.”_

“Yes,” he breathed, shoulders slumping in on themselves just the slightest hair, but Rey saw it, the way he recoiled at her words, “I am.”

He was looking at her, _looking_ at her, as if he had been kicked and she hated herself for a moment, for making him look at her like that. _Please,_ she had heard on the wind that night, as he chased after her in that forest, imploring her to stay. She had ignored it then.

“You know who I am now, don’t you?” He asked her then, and Rey’s eyes snapped up to meet his, “who I really am?”

“Solo,” she acknowledged, and he flinched at the name.

“Then you know why—” Kylo began, but she cut him off.

“Why what—why you burned down the Jedi temple? Why you killed countless innocent people?” Rey growled, “because I doubt a name can account for that.”

“I didn’t,” he said simply, and Rey stopped breathing for a second, confused, “sure, I’ve killed countless souls, but I never burned down the temple. It was Snoke. I betrayed them, yes, but that wasn’t what I wanted.”

She can hear him now, the past leaking into the present, just as he was that day, kneeling in the hot Jakku sand, stricken as ever. _Just know that I didn’t mean it—I didn’t want this._

“Their names, Rey. All of them gave me their names and in turn their legacy to uphold. You yourself ogled over them, told stories of their escapades. I was built from their _names,_ Rey. Obi-Wan Kenobi, Skywalker, Solo—I never wanted that. You _knew_ I never wanted that,” he said. In the dark his black robes plastered themselves against the night so that he was only a shadow before her. Rey wondered to herself if that even in the light he’d seem to fade away.

“A name is just a word, Be—” she caught herself as it formed inside of her mouth, “Kylo Ren,” she corrected. It crawled out of her throat course and raw and laid itself out between them like a rotting carcass.

“You don’t even _have_ one,” he bellowed, anger so fierce she swore she could see the fire alight again in his eyes, “how would you _know_ the weight of a name. Your parents were filthy junk traders, you’re _no one,_ you’re _nothing.”_

Tears welled up in the corners of Rey’s eyes, running down her cheeks and she wished they would stop. She couldn’t let him do this to her. But then, his face grew soft.

“But not to me,” he sighed, hand reaching out to her as if to comfort her across the void of space. She looked at it for a moment but didn’t take it, and Kylo dropped the gloved offering to his side. After a weighted silence he spoke again, “do you remember those nights in my room?” He was staring at his hands now, lacing them together nervously as if he wasn’t quite sure what to say. He didn’t look to Rey for confirmation, because _of course she remembered._ “I was always doing something, at my desk—writing. You always wanted to know what I was doing, but I’d hide it from you. I wouldn’t let you see,” he continued.

Rey pushed a hand across her face, wiping away the salty lines of tears that had settled there. She steeled herself with anger, “that was a long time ago,” she growled, “we were different people then.”

“Rey, _please,_ ” Kylo said then, dark eyes swimming with the past and Rey’s breath caught in her throat, “ _please_ just let me say this.”

She bit her lip so hard she thought it might bleed, concerned and so confused because wasn’t this the boy she had always known? Wasn’t this him, now, in the soft blue moonlight of Ahch-To?

“It was an exercise,” he started again, voice weak. He was _afraid,_ Rey realized suddenly. This behemoth of a man was bent over himself, shoulders turned toward the earth, pleading with her to listen, and he was afraid of the words he was about to say. “Luke told me, once it became clear that the dark was tempting me, to make a list of things that could keep me in the light,” Kylo explained painfully slow, “of reasons to stay, I guess. The list—it started out long. I would write it every night in my dreams. I thought that it might keep away the nightmares at first—eventually it was just a desperate habit once it became clear—” he choked for a second, the sentence tying itself into a knot on the tip of his tongue, “once it became clear that there was no hope for me.”

Rey felt like she had just been sucker punched in the gut. She saw him now, that tired, scared boy, in front of her just as he had always been, and guilt teased at the back of her mind. She had abandoned him too, hadn’t she? She had given up on him just like everybody else.

“It started with simple things—flying, my family, calligraphy—you know, just things I enjoyed, things that gave my life meaning,” he said, “but over the years the list got shorter. In the end, there wasn’t much left at all… there was only—” he stopped to breathe, as if gathering courage from the air.

That was the moment Rey realized what he had been trying to say this entire time. Just as the word left his mouth the thought fired across the synapses in her brain. It ran through her like electricity, thrumming through her veins like a live wire. She wanted to drink it up, to let it soak through her with such warmth that she would never be cold again.

“You,” he breathed. The way it fell out of him sounded more like a prayer. He wouldn’t look at her, wouldn’t meet her eyes but she could feel the shame washing off of him in waves. “In the end, all I had left was you.”

She wanted to take him into her arms, to forget everything that had ever happened, to run away with him and damn the rest of the galaxy, but she couldn’t. She owed herself more.

“But you left me!” She screamed, tears streaming again, running in hot lines like stars burning into the viewpoint when going into hyperdrive, “I have never felt more _alone.”_

“Not anymore,” he pleaded, but Rey turned her face away. “I didn’t break our bond, Rey,” he reasoned, calling her gaze back to his own. His brown eyes looked like rich earth—she imagined for a moment flowers sprouting on his irises. “It was Snoke,” he revealed, bitterness apparent in his voice, “He wanted to take away the last thing that ever meant anything to me. He wanted to make me think you weren’t real.”

“Ben,” Rey sighed, and it seemed like four years’ worth of tension melted out of her. She reached out her bare hand toward him. She wanted to touch him, to feel him warm against her. All this time _wanting,_ and she was finally going to let herself have it. He had never left her, he had never _wanted_ to leave her, and couldn’t that be enough?

He ungloved his hand and reached out across the dark toward her, and it felt as if the both of them were reaching across time and into the past, back to when they were both just children, back to when nothing really mattered. As their hands met, he whispered, “it was always going to be _you,_ little light.”

When he finally faded away, even as the embers of the fire cooled to ash and the night chill swept in on the breeze, Rey had never felt warmer.

*

The throne room on the Supremacy was draped in bright red—the color of fury, of fire, of the First Order. Guards stood on either side of Snoke’s throne in their shiny red armor, holding red weapons. As Kylo Ren strode up the walkway toward his master, he stuck out stark against the wave of color before him, his black cape billowing about behind him as each step ate up the distance to the throne. His steps snapped hard against the glossy floor, echoing through the chamber.

“Master,” he spoke, voice mechanical through the mask he wore, as he kneeled, head bowed low.

“You let the girl go at Starkiller base,” Snoke hissed, leaning forward in his chair to tower over the man, “and now you dare come to me wearing some silly mask? You don’t deserve _his name._ Take off that wretched thing you _child.”_

Kylo Ren reached up to pull the mask from his head, before placing it at his side. He did not cower at the sight of the creature in front of him. Instead, he looked up through the strands of his black hair, determined, eyes like pools of blood, lit crimson by the red of his surroundings. “I will not fail you this time,” he vowed, voice even and sharp as a blade.

“We shall see about that. Bring her to me,” Snoke growled, “finish what Darth Vader started. Defeat the Jedi and you shall rule the galaxy.”

“I have already begun,” Kylo informed the man, “by your steady guidance I will have seduced her with her greatest weakness—Ben Solo,” he spat the name from his mouth, “any moment now, and she will be coming here of her own free will.”

“Good,” Snoke crooned, settling back into his throne, “good.”


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short short short short chapter leading up to that *big* scene you've all been waiting for. I know, I'm sorry. I just had to leave you all in anticipation just a /little/ bit longer. But I promise it's coming!

Rey streaked across the rocky hills on her way to Luke’s hut, the need to move coursing through her. She had switched out her trusted staff for the lightsaber, which she clutched in her hand as she ran. Rain pelted down hard in splatters against the jagged ground and curled her hair at the ends that she had left out of their usual line of buns. She had made a mistake, thinking that he was lost, thinking that he couldn’t be saved, and she needed to go to him. All these years and she needed to _be with him_ again. She crashed through the door of Luke’s room and he sat up from where he was stoking his fire, startled.

“I’m going,” Rey huffed, droplets rolling down the planes of her face, breathing hard, her chest rising and falling with heavy sags like the crashing waves of the tumultuous sea some ways beneath them.

“Rey—” Luke sighed, pulling his body upright and looking at her. She knew she must look crazy through his eyes—soaking wet and frantic, “think about this.” His voice was calm and soft as cotton robes, but tired, oh so tired, and she saw the age that dug spidery lines across his face. He had told her, after that first encounter of screaming and accusing, about the last night of Ben Solo. How he had seen the darkness churning inside of the young man’s mind and had made the mistake of drawing his blade. Luke had told her about the fear in his eyes, the abandonment. Rey wondered how many times he had looked back on that moment and wished he could change the past—that maybe if things had gone differently, there would be no reason for her to run to Ben, because he would already be by her side. She gritted her teeth at the thought, determined not to look back wondering the same.

“If I go to him, Ben Solo _will turn,_ ” Rey declared, gaze hard. She wanted his blessing, wanted him to tell her that _yes, of course he will turn,_ but she would go without it. She saw the moment Luke realized this. He rubbed at his grey brow with his hand, jaw tight, before nodding curtly in return. Rey turned hard on her heel, ready to leave immediately, but she stopped at the sound of Luke’s voice.

“Did you see him again?” He asked wearily. The fire crackled in an orange blaze behind him, a warm comfort in contrast to the weather outside. It cast low shadows against the walls, and they seemed to dance on the breeze drifting in through the open door.

“He came to me—he explained everything,” she answered hurriedly. She needed to go, she needed to _see_ him. Rey felt like that girl from Jakku for the first time in a while—never standing still, always reaching for something in the distance. Movement was a necessity in the desert, and that old instinct thrummed through her now stronger than ever.

“Please,” Luke warned, voice even, “be careful.”

Rey nodded for her master’s benefit, but merely brushed the statement off. She could _feel_ it, the way Ben flowed through her veins. They were one, in the end. They would always be one. And maybe that’s what scared Luke. She needed him, needed Ben like she needed the air to breathe, and right now, he needed her too.

She ran through the downpour toward the hazy shadow of the Falcon splayed out against the cliffside. Her plan was to shoot herself out into space in one of its escape pods, and drift onto the Supremacy where Ben would be waiting for her. She wouldn’t let herself think otherwise, she had no reason to.

*

The pod was small, and she shivered against her wet clothes as she drifted against the cold black of space. The only light she saw were the soft smattering of stars on the other side of the glass, and the buzzing white lights from inside of the pod. Rey thought bitterly to herself that she should have at least had the sense to change before throwing herself at the enemy, hair tangled in damp waves around her head, but it was far too late for that now. It wasn’t long before the ship’s tractor beam pulled her into the ship bay, anyways.

She didn’t know exactly what she was expecting when she finally landed inside of the ship, but it certainly wasn’t this. Storm troopers lined the walls, their white armor glinting in the harsh lights. It was as if the whole army had been called for her entrance. Rey’s stomach dropped a little at the thought, the crash of their uniform steps tearing through her. _Maybe they caught Ben,_ she thought in fear, _maybe they knew he was planning on turning._ When she glimpsed him out of the corner of her eye, she had the audacity to feel relief for half a moment, to melt into the padded seat of the pod and feel the tension drain away.

It was only moments later when his full face came into view that she felt well and truly betrayed, however. He stood there, above her, draped in his black robes and still unmasked—looking just as he had mere hours before—but his face was twisted in a deep scowl. The anticipation she had built up inside of herself fell away to a shallow sort of disappointment. His eyes were black holes that glared through her, unfeeling, and her heart ached all over again. She had already begun to accept the fate that waited ahead of her, defeated. Even so, when the door to her pod hissed open, the first words he spoke shot through her like blaster fire.

“Cuff her.”


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is, the moment you have all been waiting for--or is it? Muah ha ha.

The glaring white lights of the turbolift enveloped Rey as the dark shadow of Ben Solo towered over her. She shivered against the cool air, still damp, but he didn’t seem to notice, eyes trained straight ahead. He was so stiff, in person. It caught up to her now that this was only the second time she’d ever really been near him, actually been in his presence. It was as if she were standing next to an angry storm cloud the way energy seemed to boil off of him in waves.

“Please,” she breathed, turning to look up at him. He was so tall, so so tall, and trapped there next to him made Rey feel even smaller, “you don’t have to do this Ben.”

He chuckled low, but the sound came out bitter and hard, “what do you think it is I’m doing?” he questioned. Ben turned to look at her, a single dark brow ticked up in annoyance. He was patronizing her, she realized, and suddenly she felt like a child all over again. She could hear him speaking to her from a time many years past, the words rolling around inside of her skull and tinging her cheeks pink with embarrassment. _I am a grown man, and you are just a child._ Rey set her jaw, determined not to let him bully the fight out of her, but even as she geared herself up to protest, her heart wasn’t really in it. He was the only person she had ever _really_ had, and Ben was ready to just throw all of it away.

“You could join me,” she pleaded, “I would _help_ you.”

“I have to do this,” he answered, breaking away from her imploring gaze.

“Why?” Rey asked, and she mentally scolded herself for the ache that snuck into her voice.

“I have to let the past die,” Ben said after a long pause, “to kill it, if I have to.”

Rey felt gutted. She wanted to drop to her knees, to lay down and just die already. He had never really wanted her, had never really needed her. Not the way she had. Her mind ran through all of the long nights spent hanging over him, laughing, playing, and how pathetic he must have thought it all. _I will never understand why I’m doomed to babysit you for the rest of eternity_ , he had hissed at her once in a fit of rage, but he had meant it, hadn’t he? She was just a child, just a burden. Even when he would smile at her—it could never have been anything more. He could have never thought of her the way she yearned for him to. And now? Now he was going to kill her.

When the turbolift doors opened, Rey was greeted with a room that looked as if it were on fire—or drenched in blood. A polished black walkway led up to a giant grey throne, at which sat a shriveled sort of creature Rey could only assume was the Supreme Leader. Giant, bright red draperies covered the walls, and guards in all red armor stood ready at either side of the room. Ben led her by her arm, dragging her forward. As she stood in front of Snoke, her cuffs fell to the floor, and she was pulled to her knees.

“Very good,” Snoke crooned, and Rey could feel Ben bend himself into a bow behind her.

“Master,” he acknowledged. Rey struggled against the force that was keeping her restrained, but despite her best efforts, it seemed hopeless.

“I see you brought me what I requested,” Snoke growled, leaning forward in his chair to study her. It was then that Rey noticed her lightsaber by his side. They had confiscated it almost immediately on her arrival. With a burst of strength, she reached out for the saber, the distraction just enough to break Snoke’s hold on her. The unlit hilt arced toward her, but it swung widely of course before hitting her in the head, knocking her back down. It returned easily to Snoke’s side, and he threw her a wicked smile. “With you, my dear,” his voice rumbled, and Rey clenched her fists at the name, “the Resistance will burn, and Kylo Ren will rise to his true destiny.”

Rey turned to look at Ben one last time, but his face lacked any sort of remorse as he stood before his master, eyes hung low in respect. Ben didn’t care about her, maybe he never really had. Just then, Rey was swept into the air until she was hanging in agony before Snoke. Her nerves screamed out with pain as if electricity were shooting through her veins. She couldn’t see Ben, but somewhere, in the back of her mind, she felt him. _I’m sorry._

“I will not be the end of you, child—and oh how I wish you could watch the devastation to follow—but there is more important business to attend to,” Snoke hissed, pulling her in close until she could feel his hot breath on her face. He dropped her before Ben again, facing him now. “I can see it in your heart, yes, yes,” he mused to himself. Ben clutched his saber in his right hand. Rey looked up at him through wide eyes. This would be it, wouldn’t it? This would be the end. _Kill the past,_ he was going to kill her.

It wasn’t so bad, really. In the grand scheme of things. In all of her life she had never even dreamed of seeing Ben in person, of being in the same room with him, of breathing the same air. It was almost a comfort to her, in the end, that in spite of everything, they were finally together. She accepted her fate as he drew his lightsaber forward. She did not let herself be afraid. She closed her eyes then, thinking of that meadow of his dreams. Of the tall trees stretching out above them into the stars like hope or possibility or something in between that felt a lot like freedom. She thought of Ben like that, laying in the grass, blades tickling at his skin as a bright yellow wildflower brushed the cusp of his ear. Rey thought about lying down next to him, in this moment, of fading away into the happy memory, of letting it comfort her again.

“He is turning his saber to strike true!” Snoke declared, anticipation building in his voice. Ben pushed his saber closer, still unlit. “And he KILLS his true enemy!”

Rey wanted to keep her eyes shut, to stay in that moment forever, but she needed to see it—to see the moment his red blade split her open, to see her reflected in his eyes as her life faded out. He flicked his wrist, and she heard the familiar hum of a lightsaber burning to life. Ben looked at her, dark eyes hard, mouth a straight line drawn deep across his face.

And then—

He winked?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took me an entire week to write, and for that I'm sorry. A lot of stuff came up in school and I've just been swamped. Also it turns out writing action sequences is extremely difficult, and I am absolutely no good at it. Either way, this chapter took me far too long for far too little and far too poor a quality. We're nearing the end game now though, so at least there's that to look forward to.

Realization spread through Rey as a wild smile drew itself across of Ben’s lips, his wrist still bent back at where it had flicked her saber through Snoke’s body. She had thought she was going to die, had made peace with that reality, and he had the audacity to what—wink? There wasn’t time for her to be mad now, though. The saber was still flying through the air toward them, blade lit a sapphire blue hue, and Rey reached her hand up to catch it. Her fingers curled tightly around the handle just as the top half of Snoke’s body fell to the floor with a sickening thud.

The Praetorian Guard was closing in on them now, mobilizing from where they had stood at the corners of the room, but as Rey pulled herself up from the ground, she kept her eyes locked with Ben’s. It seemed like a million words passed between them in those short moments— _I’m sorry,_ and _are we really doing this,_ and _never again, I promise, never again._ The pair nodded to each other in silent agreement then, the firsts of the guard surrounding them, weapons hissing alive, before turning back to back to meet the red blades.

What happened next was a flurry of fighting.

The pair of them moved in unison inside of the circle of guards around them. It was as if they were one, pushing and pulling against a tide of enemies, as blades hissed through armor and flesh and bone. It was a viscous sort of dance that spun Rey and Ben around in quick circles, ducking and slicing through air, taking on as many as three guards at once. They moved intuitively, feeling the other’s breath in their chest like their own. They shared the brunt of the battle. When one guard lunged toward Ben’s weak side, Rey turned and pushed her humming blade through his chest with an effortless stroke. In the same move, Ben leaned forward so Rey could lurch back to avoid an oncoming swing. Eventually the fighting broke off—Rey to one side of the room and Ben to the other. Even then, the pair seemed to orbit like planets around their shared sun.

One guard was using what appeared to be a whip, and he it lashed out like a licking red flame toward Rey until it wrapped around her saber blade. He pulled her in, inch by inch, each step toward her a deep thud against the ground, and Rey grunted in exertion as she struggled against his strength. Once he was close enough that Rey would have been able to see his eyes if it weren’t for the blank stare of the red mask, she ducked under his arm and pulled her blade through his side. It screeched through his armor and he collapsed to the ground.

On the other end of the room, Ben was fighting off three guards at once. His style was vicious, it seemed like he was shirking most of his force abilities in favor of his sheer mass—throwing punches and kicking out knees as well as thrusting his blade. _This must be something he learned from his father,_ Rey thought to herself as she glimpsed him from the corner of her eye. She almost took a moment to imagine it—a young Ben Solo staring up at Han from the copilot’s chair as it was explained to him that the force couldn’t solve everything. She could almost hear the man’s voice, a low rumble around her, _some problems gotta be solved with your fists, kid._ She was jolted out of the thought by the slashing of dual blades through the air, and she let out a defiant scream that tore through her body as she charged at the red figure.

Ben held his saber out before him at arm’s length, circling around as a group of guards surrounded him. It was a silent command of _keep back_ that gave him a few precious moments to plan his next attack. Rey called out in pain from across the platform as her arm was sliced by a blade, and Ben flew into action. He knocked down two guards in one swoop, grabbing one of their spears with his off hand. Turning, he stabbed it through the body next to him, before pushing his saber up to the man’s throat. He dropped his saber mid push, startled, as the long blade of the final guard flew toward his head. He stumbled back and attempted to take the guard’s weapon away, struggling for control of the staff, before he was taken into a chokehold.

Rey was in a similar predicament on the other side of the room as she tried to hold back the blade of another guard. Too locked up to maneuver around him like the one before, she dropped her saber and ducked, before catching it midair and cutting through his stomach and throat with two swipes. The body fell off of the side of the throne room platform as she spun to see Ben struggling to breathe. He was using all of his strength to push the guard off of him, but to no avail.

“Ben!” She called out, locking eyes with him, before tossing him the hilt of her saber. It came alive in his hand, cutting straight through the face of the guard who had been restraining him. Ben took a step forward, shrugging off the body like a coat. The room was still at last. They both seemed to sag at this realization, both breathing in hard, ragged breaths.

“We need to move,” Ben huffed, glancing warily at the door. His head was cocked to the side as if he were listening for the sound of footsteps. No doubt stormtroopers would be swarming the room any minute.

“No you need to explain—” Rey began, but he cut her off.

“I will explain everything to you as soon as you can, but if we’re not off this ship in the next few minutes, we aren’t getting off this ship alive.” He was holding out his hand to her, beckoning her to follow, but she stood her ground.

“You’ll explain it to me _now,_ ” She demanded, crossing her arms and planting her feet wide. Her arm still oozed blood from where she had been cut, but she could barely feel the pain from the leftover adrenaline running through her. It also made her a little braver than usual.

“I will tell you anything you want to know for the rest of our lives, but I activated a security override command under Hux’s authorization code before you got here—and not only will the Resistance arrive any minute to blow the entire fleet to hell, but the Supremacy is going to basically self-destruct when the entire payload unloads itself into the ship and we _really,”_ he drug the word out as more of a plea than anything else, “really need to go.”

Rey looked at him, silent and dumbfounded. He had been planning this all along, and he hadn’t told her? He was ready to let the whole First Order burn and he hadn’t thought to clue her in on the deal? He seemed to read the thought on her face because his next words answered the unasked question.

“Look, Rey,” he sighed, dragging a big open palm down his face, “I needed to know you’d be safe—I needed to know he wouldn’t look into your mind and see all of it and kill you immediately. I’ve spent years—my entire life—building up walls against him. He couldn’t know—”

She still seemed unconvinced, but just then the ship lurched as a crash of blaster fire shook the ship. The resistance fleet had arrived. There wasn’t time for this now, but there would be, once they were both safe.

“Please, Rey,” he begged, gloved hand reaching out to her from across the room, “come with me.”

When she finally took his hand in hers, finally touched him after all of these years of dreams and aching and wishing, it was like it had been there all along.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah was gonna make this and the next chapter one, but I kind liked the quiet moment between the two of them and wanted it to stand alone. Almost done here folks.

Rey watched quietly from behind as Ben climbed aboard the Millennium Falcon for the first time since his childhood. They had escaped the Supremacy in the nick of time. Blaster fire had lit up the black emptiness of space red as they slipped through the rebel forces, back to where Rey had left the Falcon abandoned off the edge of Atch-To. He moved slow and deep in thought, long body bent down as if he were trying to make himself young again. He let his fingertips glide over the walls of the hallway leading up to the cockpit, and Rey could almost imagine his wide palms engulfing those of the child from his past. She hadn’t known Ben before his time at the Temple with Luke, hadn’t seen what he was like, but she could see it here, in the whispers of memory that radiated out from the walls. She could see the ghost of a bright-eyed boy, his toothy grin as he stayed close to his father’s heels. The adventures he must have imagined having one day in his time gliding between systems and stars. Then, as if out of an old, forgotten habit, Ben stuffed himself into the copilot’s chair, eyes set on some point out in the vast endlessness of space.

“It’s smaller than I remember,” he breathed quietly, hands still running over everything, exploring what once must have been so familiar.

Rey wanted to make a witty retort back about how it was him that got bigger as she slid into the pilot’s seat next to him, but she saw the faraway look in his dark brown eyes and thought better of it. She stayed silent next to him as he mused over the past.

“He used to tell me it would be mine when I was old enough,” Ben sighed after a moment. His bear claw of a hand reached up to grasp at the pair of dice hanging above them. “He won it in a game of Sabbacc, you know? It was his pride and joy—,” his breath hitched, “and he had wanted to give it to me. He taught me _everything._ He was _everything_ I ever wanted to be.”

Rey nodded but didn’t speak. She thought it was mostly for his benefit, but she wasn’t sure if that was true, or if she just didn’t know what to say.

“But after it became clear that I showed strength in the force—not only that, but the dark—I was sent away to my uncle—and he, well he never stopped looking at me like he had failed. And after what I’ve done—he’ll never stop.”

It was then, with that crushed look in his eyes, that Rey reached out to touch him. She placed a warm hand on his cheek, drawing his gaze up to meet hers, “then make it right. Make it right.”

“I can’t see them, not like this,” Ben replied, shaking his head and pulling away from her soft touch. Rey thought for a moment before responding, studying him up and down. He was still wearing his black cloak. His body was still blood spattered and his wild hair curled around his face at odd angles.

“Well of course not,” she answered, face drawn. Ben’s expression dropped, clearly ashamed, “I mean—when was the last time you had a haircut?” A smile played across her lips.

“You know that’s not what I meant,” he protested.

“No, but it’s what I meant.”

*

That is, essentially, how Rey ended up perched on the dash with Ben beneath her, armed with a pair of old scissors she had scrounged out of a hidden away med kit, her fingers tangled up in his dark brown locks. She worked intently, combing out knots with her nimble fingers and snipping at the ends. Ben sat quietly, through it all, as her small hands brushed against his ears and neck. It was strangely intimate, how close they were, in this easy moment of domesticity. They had never been so close before.

“What do you want?” She asked, leaning and twisting over his right shoulder to glance at his face.

“Just make sure it’s long enough to cover my ears,” he answered, voice rough and tired, “I hate the things.” Rey thought he seemed tired, the way he waned to the side. She wondered how long it had been since he’d gotten a good night’s rest.

“I will take offence on behalf of your poor ears,” Rey pouted, pushing back some hair to get a good look at them.

“Trust me on this one,” he scoffed, before settling back into his seat, eyes closed.

By the time she was finished, the results were a pile of dark curls on the ground and a sleeping Ben with neatly cropped hair—still long enough to cover his ears, as requested—but not nearly such a mess. Rey tried to maneuver around him without jostling him awake, but as she slipped down from her spot, he reached up to gently grab her wrist and pull her toward him.

“Thanks,” he mumbled close to her ear.

“Mmm,” she hummed in acknowledgement, her heart fluttering and skin tingling from the weight of his hand on her, “if you’re awake you should try to shower and get out of those clothes—”

“I’m gonna need some clothes to change in to,” he answered, grunting in protest as he pulled himself out of the chair.

“Don’t worry, I handled that.”

“You brought me clothes?” He asked, confused and brow drawn.

“I knew I’d be taking you back with me, no matter what,” Rey declared, and she swore she could see the warmth blooming on his cheeks.

“You’ve always been too good to me,” Ben whispered under his breath as he stumbled down the hall to the ‘fresher.

“It’s nothing, just a sweater and a pair of pants, really,” she replied, waving her arm vaguely, “I left them out on the bench seat.” Once the hiss of the door closed behind him Rey let her confession drift out onto the air, “you’re all I’ve ever needed.”


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know what you're going to say--"Anya, you're soooooooooo laaaaaaaate posting this chaaaaaaaapter."   
> Why yes, yes I am. I had one heck of a time writing this one, but I promise you it's about twice as long as my longest chapter, so at leas you have that to look forward to. I hope it was worth the wait.  
> Also, this story seems to have gone on much longer than anticipated. I /probably/ won't change the chapter count again, but eh, anything can happen.  
> Thanks for reading and sticking with me on this long... looooooong journey.  
> Enjoy!

As the Falcon approached D’Qar, Rey could feel Ben holding his breath three rooms over. He hadn’t joined her back in the cockpit after his shower. Instead, she heard him pacing back and forth down the grated hallway floors, his footfalls echoing metallic clangs through the walls. It was a comforting thought, almost, realizing he was the same brooding boy she knew from all those nights in their dream. Even after all of the blood shed since then. Even when she had been certain he could never be that boy again.

“Sit down back there!” She called over her shoulder, “we’re gonna land.” He didn’t even grunt in return, but his incessant pacing stopped, and she was satisfied as she led the freighter safely onto the ground. As soon as the ship touched down, she made her way back to him. Rey found him sitting on a bench seat, head in his hands. His hair, still damp, curled around his fingers and the dark, knit sweater he was wearing clung to his tense frame.

“Should we talk, before you go out there?” Rey asked softly. She had changed out of her own clothes while he was in the ‘fresher, and she was now wearing a pair of fitted leather pants and a dusty grey tunic. Her arm was wrapped with a leather band from where she was struck on the Supremacy and had hastily mended her wound.

“They’re going to call me a war criminal,” Ben scoffed, the frustration evident in the strain of his voice, but there was something else there too—timidity, fear—“I won’t make it two feet off the Falcon before I’m shot.”

“That’s not going to happen,” she said, sitting down next to him. Rey didn’t know though, couldn’t possibly know. After all of the things he had been accused of—burning down the Jedi Temple, being the right-hand man of Snoke, leading the Knights of Ren—they could easily try him as a war criminal.

Ben shook his head, determined.

“C’mon, be honest for a second. That’s not what you’re really afraid of here,” Rey pushed, and she wanted to touch him, wanted to put a comforting hand on his shoulder, to reach out through that aching space between them and make him whole again, but she didn’t know how. Instead, her open palm hovered in the air. “This isn’t about you, this is about your parents.”

“Why can’t it be?” He asked, turning toward her in a flash. It was as if something inside of him had snapped. She saw the flicker of fire in her eyes and realized that the dark would never really leave him, even now that Snoke was dead. Except now, she recognized it for what it was—hurt and fear. “Why can’t it ever be about _me?_ About what _I_ want? I was just a child when they sent me away, Rey. I never had a chance—and now look at me!”

“They thought they were doing what was best for you, they all did. I know how it feels to be abandoned, Ben. Don’t forget that. But you have a chance here, a chance to show them they didn’t fail—because I know they live with the guilt of what happened with you every single day,” Rey said. She watched the fight fade out of him, and he looked almost small next to her, fidgeting with the hem of his sweater.

“What if they don’t want me back?” He breathed, the question nothing more than a puff of air leaving his lips.

And that was it, wasn’t it? After all these years of being handed off, pushed aside, sent away, he still wanted them to want him. Ben needed them to.

“Trust me,” Rey promised, voice firm, “they’ll be so relieved you’re here.”

*

Rey had landed the freighter some ways from the camp itself, so the pair had to hike down through a patch of trees before they reached the base. As they broke through the tree line, the happy commotion of people hit them at the same time as the sunlight. Most of the people didn’t notice as the pair pushed through the crowd toward the main complex, but Finn caught her eye from across the way.

“Rey!” He called out to her, weaving through orange suited flyboys toward her, “you’re alive!”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” She asked. She could feel Ben sticking like a shadow to her side.

“Luke Skywalker sent out a transmission from an old X-Wing not long before the attack—he said he feared you were still on board the Supremacy—when the ship blew, I couldn’t be sure you had gotten out of there in one piece, but you made it!” Finn explained, blazing through his words with a hurried sort of excitement. He pulled her into his arms, enveloping her in a tight hug that Rey returned. Even though they hadn’t gotten to spend much time around one another, the two of them had become quick friends before she had gone off to train with Luke, and Rey was happy to see he had made it through the fight unscathed.

Ben shifted his weight from one foot to the next, a silent presence behind them.

“Hey!” Another voice called out not too far away, and Rey turned to see Poe—the pilot who had found her at Starkiller base—waving, “you made it!” His eyes drew up then, toward the dark, brooding figure of Ben, and Rey winced at what she knew was realization spreading across his face. Poe had been one of the only people to see Ben without his mask, he knew exactly who Ben was. Poe strode over to them with long, heavy steps.

“What the hell is he doing here?” Poe hissed, dark eyes locked on Ben. And the man—the one who not hours earlier had been Kylo Ren, with his broad shoulders and towering height—cowered under the gaze, his head ducked down and shoulders hunched forward. It was almost comical—could have been, at least—if it wasn’t so damn sad.

Finn looked confused, eyes shifting between Rey and Poe. Even though he had been on that base, he hadn’t gotten a glimpse at the man behind the mask. Even as a Storm Trooper, he never got a chance to see what Kylo Ren really looked like under all that black. There were rumors, surely—he was born deformed, he was less than human, he was just so _ugly_ he couldn’t bear to show his face—but none of them even came close to the truth.

“What the hell is _who_ doing here?” Finn questioned back, suddenly seeming to realize the very large, very man-shaped elephant in the room. “ _Him?”_ Finn continued, gesturing at Ben with a pointing hand— “Who the hell is he?” and then turning to address the man directly, “who the hell are you?”

“The better question is why Rey decided it was a good idea to let Kylo Ren just walk into the Resistance base,” Poe growled

“ _This_ is Kylo Ren?” Finn gaped, loud enough that a few people passing by turned to take notice.

“Why don’t you announce it to the whole base?” Rey spit out, “He’s with me. It’s _fine.”_ It was strange how quickly she could slide into a fighting stance against her own friends, but her feet slid into place as she shifted her weight forward. It was an almost unconscious movement to protect what was—well—hers.

“On what planet would that be fine?” Poe shot back, “because it’s definitely not this one. Not even in this entire system. Give me one reason I shouldn’t shoot him right here.” His hand slid down to the blaster on his belt, and Ben stumbled a step back. He wasn’t afraid, not really. The slump of his posture and duck of his head mirrored more of a scolded child. _He was ashamed._

“He was your spy,” Rey answered, and she watched as Poe’s fingers loosened their hold on his weapon.

“What?” Finn’s question was nothing more than a puff of air between them.

“He was the one who told you where the fleet would be. He was the one who initiated the self-destruct. And he was the one who disabled their shields so your fighters could get through,” Rey explained.

“That doesn’t change what he did—he’s responsible for the deaths of _thousands,”_ Poe stated, and Rey could feel Ben ache behind her. This is what she had promised him wouldn’t happen, and here it was, happening—accused by the people that trusted her most, no less.

“Don’t people deserve a second chance?” Rey asked, near pleading now.

“Not if you’re him,” Poe replied, sliding the blaster out of its holster.

“You were a Storm Trooper, Finn. You were a member of the First Order. What gives you the right to a second chance and not him?” Rey begged, trying to sway one of the men to see her side.

“I didn’t have a choice—” Finn answered.

“Well neither did he!” Rey cut in, “Please, just let me take him to Leia.”

Poe dragged his eyes over Ben one last time, taking in the man for all he was. Ben stayed still under the scrutiny, eyes hooded, but Rey saw the fists at his side and knew how much he hated this—the rejection, the half-hazard appraisal of his worth without a word in edgewise.

“Fine,” Poe sighed, returning his blaster to his belt, “but I’m not happy about it,” he threw in as an afterthought.

“No one said you had to be,” Rey chided back.

*

The walk to the main building had to have been the longest trek of Rey’s life, although it only dragged on a couple of minutes. Poe and Finn hadn’t followed once she and Ben had broken away, but the two of them still had to weave through the crowds of celebrating rebels, and the dread with which Ben was dragging his feet wasn’t helping the pace. She could feel him vibrating like a live wire at her side, anxiety coursing through him. She wondered what it would be like, to see her parents again after all of these years, if she would feel the same sort of nerves that he did. Rey thought it would be different, still. Ben’s relationship with his parents had always been strained, and Rey would never really be able to understand everything that went on in the broiling storm of a brain.

Even in the dreams he had avoided talking about his parents.

_“Why do you always wear your hair like that?” Ben asked._

_It was the meadow again, and only the second time she had ever seen it. The spattering of wildflowers speckled the ground like brightly colored freckles against the earth. She knew freckles well, how skin could bloom under the hot dessert heat, and thought maybe this was the same._

_“My mother does it up like this for me,” the nine-year-old spoke, playing lazily at the buns. The two of them were spread out over the grassy ground, arms stretched wide and soaking in the endless daylight of the dream. It was one of the odd occasions where Ben seemed rather calm, weightless. “Is grass really this green?” She asked, “is anything really this green?”_

_Ben laughed. It was such a strange thing to hear from him, and it burst forth from his chest like liquid gold. “Yes,” he said, still chuckling, “things really are this green.”_

_“Why are you so happy today?” Rey questioned, suspicion evident as she rolled on to her stomach to look at him, wrinkling her nose with distrust._

_“Can’t I be in a good mood?” The teen responded, feigning astonishment._

_“You are literally never in a good mood,” Rey deadpanned._

_Ben sighed deeply and plucked a piece of grass from the ground. He fiddled with the blade between his fingers before answering, “My mother is coming to visit.”_

_“Your mother?”_

_“Mmm mmm,” he hummed, “I haven’t seen her in a really long time—she’s always busy with work and it’s hard to hop over to another system just to see me. But this time—this time she says she’s coming.” There was excitement in his voice, a kind of wistful hope that she had never seen in Ben. “I have so much I want to tell her,” he breathed, half to himself and half to the wide-open sky above them._

Now Rey knows that Leia never made that meeting, she got caught up in some important thing at work and had pushed back the date again and again until the promise to see her son had been forgotten, but at the time, Rey had seen how much he longed to see his mother. She could see it now, too, buried under the fear that took hold on his heart after all of these years.

It was with that thought in mind that she stood still a moment longer than she had ought to in front of the large metal doors, Ben breathing heavy behind her as if he had just sprinted the distance from the Falcon. She could feel his heart lumbering in his chest even from a step away. But it was that hesitation, that moment stuck in the memory of the past that let Han Solo open up the blast doors to exit the main building where one could usually find General Organa going over papers and plans, and meet the eyes of his son for the first time in over a decade.

“Ben?” He breathed. Rey could feel it, the second she faded out of existence. It was just the two of them, father and son, locked in a gaze that seemed to narrow the universe itself down to a single atom of space.

“Hi dad.”


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What? Another chapter? So soon? Anya you shouldn't have.  
> I know, I know, you're welcome.   
> Anyways, yes, here is the chapter--obviously shorter than the monster I posted a couple days ago, but a chapter none the less. And thank you very much to the people who didn't believe me when I said I wouldn't change the chapter count again--because I did. But this time is the last time. I promise.   
> 25 chapters, that's it, donezo.   
> Thanks so much for reading, and enjoy!

It’s funny how time can seem to stop and rewind itself sometimes. As the two men stood, facing each other, Rey held her breath. She wasn’t sure what she was expecting—the silence stretching out between them like a rubber band waiting to snap—but Han Solo pulling his son up into his arms and crushing him close, certainly wasn’t it. It was Ben’s memory she was seeing, Rey knew, as the universe seemed to fade around her.

_“Hey kid!” Han smiled, grin wide, arms stretched even wider out to his sides. There was a weightlessness to him in this moment—dark circles hadn’t yet settled under his eyes, and his hair was still more pepper than salt. A boy with a dark mop of hair on his head sprinted toward him—Ben. He looked to be no more than twelve here._

_“Dad!” He cried happily as the man took him up into his arms. They stood there for a moment, trapped against each other, before Han held out his son at arms length._

_“Let me look at you—ah,” then ruffling the dark locks on Ben’s head, “I see he hasn’t made you shave it.”_

_“Luke says I can keep my hair—said he didn’t have to do it, so why should I,” Ben explained._

_“Well, good. Glad your uncle still has some sense left in him,” Han replied with a wink._

Rey blinked as the memory left her vision, the younger pair replaced again with reality. There was a sort of desperation in the way they held on to each other, both of them wanting for something the other couldn’t give—to start again. Then, just like in the flash of past she had just seen, Han held his son out before him, gazing up and down with deep, tired eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he said after a long pause, voice unsteady. Rey was sure if his father was not keeping him standing, Ben would have collapsed to his knees. She saw the way his body shook, how it ached on the verge of sobs. There was no anger in him now—he was the same child he always had been. It was everything Ben had always needed but never got to have, and the overwhelming realization of that swept through him. “C’mon,” Han said, voice a little strangled, “let’s take you to your mother.”

Rey followed a few steps behind as Han led Ben deeper into the base. Unlike minutes before when he was the shadow at her side, now Rey was the invisible guest at this reunion. It felt strange, trespassing on this. Han entered the room first, but through the doorway, Rey could see Leia sat down at a desk and spilled over a pile of papers, deep in thought. Even though she had only spent a little time with the General before training with her brother, Rey could tell that time weighed on her heavily, just like the rest.

“Leia,” Han started, taking a step further into the room.

“Han?” Leia mused, still focused on the documents in front of her, “I thought you’d gone?”

“I had, but—” Han began before Leia cut him off.

“Is something wrong?” She asked, pulling her gaze up and turning toward the group of them in the doorway. Her eyes locked on her son, then, and her body went stiff. Rey could see the ghost of Ben splayed out against her irises and knew she herself had looked much the same when they had finally met again. “Oh,” Leia said, as quick and soft as smoke, “you’re alive.” And then, she began to cry.

Han strode over to her, ready to comfort, just as Ben stumbled backward.

“We shouldn’t have come,” he was mumbling as he bumped into Rey, “we should never have come here. Don’t you see? She wishes I was dead.”

“Ben,” Rey said calmly, pressing her palm against his back as she stepped out from behind him.

“Why did I think it was possible that they’d want me back here? Of course she wouldn’t,” he continued.

“Ben,” she said again, this time firmer, and he turned to look at her. He looked stricken, dark eyes pooling with confusion and hurt, and Rey wanted to run away with him. But how was she supposed to tell him that? How could she confess what she had always known but never had the courage to say? How, when he was looking at her like she held all the answers, like she was the only thing worth staying for? How, without making her feel as if she had somehow manipulated her way into his heart when he was the most vulnerable? “I—” she stuttered, letting the words clatter against her teeth, “I want you to know—”

“Ben?” This time the voice was Leia’s, and both of them turned toward the sound. Tears still glistened in her eyes as she stretched out an arm toward him, beckoning him forward. He walked to her side, forgetting Rey for a moment as she faded against the backdrop once again. “I thought you were dead,” she explained, “after the Supremacy—I was convinced you hadn’t made it. I didn’t know what I would have done, not being able to see you again. I had never lost hope that you would come back to me—and here, here you are.”

Ben nodded, quiet and unsure.

“You were the spy, weren’t you? You made all this possible?” She asked.

“Yes,” he sighed, and Leia squeezed his hand with her own.

“I am so proud of you,” she stated, before standing and wrapping him in a strong hug. She was tiny compared to him, and yet she still found a way to swallow him whole with her open arms.

Rey began to back out of the doorway, certain that she wasn’t needed here, when she was stopped.

“Rey?” Ben called to her from across the room, and she looked up to meet his eyes, “I wouldn’t have ever made it back here if it weren’t for you—I want you to know that.”

It sounded so much like goodbye that Rey could only manage a nod before she was covering her mouth and turning back to leave, tears burning at the corners of her eyes. Of course this was goodbye, he would never think of her like she did of him—she was still a child in his eyes. It was always Rey that needed him more anyways—she had nothing, and he had this.

“Hey—” Ben continued.

“Mmm?” Rey hummed in return, the sound strangled, back still facing the rest of the room.

“I’ll see you in a minute, okay? I just have to talk with my parents,” he finished.

Relief flushed through her at his words, a warm sort of heat that tickled the tips of her ears. “Ok,” she answered, stepping out in the hall to wait for him, uncertain as ever, but knowing that she wouldn’t have to lose him again.


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well guys, here it is, the final chapter (before the epilogue). I am happy to say, we're finally at that happy ending we've all been waiting for. Thanks for being along for this wild ride, and I hope you enjoy!

The first time Rey kissed Ben Solo, she was asleep. It was a couple weeks after the rebel victory. They were still staying at the barracks, the both of them in separate wings. Still, the two seemed to meet up in their dreams. Their bond was unimpeded now that Snoke was dead, and shared dreams seemed to be happening on a much more frequent basis than before. Also, Ben’s dreams looked different now—he was no longer confined to his desk or conflicted by things at the back of his mind. Sure, the dark still called to him, but he was finding it much easier to push away now that the voices were gone. Often times, he let his imagination take hold—something he wouldn’t let himself do before—and his dreams were whole scenes playing out around them when Rey opened her eyes. This night, when she woke up, she was thrust smack dab in the middle of one.

She could tell almost immediately that whatever dream Ben had been having before she arrived had had another her in it—one conjured up by his mind—because he was speaking to her, mid-sentence, when she opened her eyes.

“And then I was thinking we could go to Kashyyyk—I could show you the beaches I used to play on when we visited Chewbacca’s family—and you could feel the ocean—not the kind of one you saw while on Ahch-to, but one you’d actually _want_ to swim in—and,” he stopped, his rambling words halting on the tip of his tongue, as he looked down at her, “oh. Oh, it’s really you now, isn’t it?”

That’s when Rey realized where she was—she didn’t recognize the room but figured it must have been Ben’s quarters back on his ship. It wasn’t the room that was startling to her, however, it was where in the room she was. Ben’s voice was coming from above her. He was sat on the edge of the bed, looking down to where she was laying below him, head resting on his thighs, gazing up.

“I’m sorry—” he started, breaking eye contact, “you can get up—I was dreaming of…” Ben trailed off then, unsure of how to justify their positions. Red was blooming across his cheeks and the back of his neck, and the heat of embarrassment started radiating off of him in waves.

“Mmm,” Rey hummed, considering, “when were you planning on taking me to Kashyyyk?”

He looked back down at her, surprised, “I-it was just a thought—” Then he saw Rey’s wide smile, and the tension seemed to melt away from his spine—“whenever you want.”

“What do you talk to me about, in your dreams?” Rey asked, tilting her head further back to get a better view of his face.

“Just small things,” he replied, “it’s like talking to you in real life, just—”

“Just what?” Rey nudged.

“Just different,” Ben sighed. He was sitting still, hands balancing his weight on either side, trying his best not to touch her anymore that absolutely necessary as she was draped across him. Rey decided to pull herself up from his lap, then, turning to sit criss-cross on the bed.

“Different how?” She pushed. He was on the edge of saying something she needed to hear, something she ached for years for him to tell her. The days she spent knotted up by the thought of him stirred in the back of her memory. _Say it,_ she wanted to scream, _say it._

“We’re not friends, in my dreams,” he said, the words falling unceremoniously out of his mouth, and for a second, Rey’s face fell. Maybe she had been wrong, maybe he didn’t think about her that way. “We’re more than that,” he finished, avoiding her gaze. Rey stayed quiet for a long time after that before speaking.

“Do you remember when I was just a girl,” she began, voice soft, “it was maybe just the second night this happened.”

He nodded, still avoiding her eyes.

“You said—you said that maybe these dreams were an escape,” Rey continued, “but I didn’t think so.”

Ben turned to look at her then, something flashing against his irises that she didn’t understand, something between hurt and hope.

“I thought that it couldn’t be an escape—because I had never felt like I belonged anywhere as much as I felt like I belonged next to you,” she whispered, the confession growing soft as if she were afraid someone else might hear, “it was like coming home. And years went by and I was just that girl who kept you up at night, and I thought that it would be impossible for you to look at me the way I looked at you when your back was turned—Like you held my very existence in the palms of your giant hands. But you were always looking the other way. I knew you’d never see me as anything other than that little girl—but that night in the hut, when you said—when you said it was always me—I thought, maybe. Maybe he could love me like that.”

“For a while I thought—when we were younger at least—I knew you had a crush on me,” Ben began, stumbling on his tongue a little as he went, “but it wouldn’t have happened—I cared about you too much to let myself ruin you. And then when—well I thought even if we saw each other again, you would hate me too much. But when you came to me on the Supremacy, I was just so happy you still believed I could be saved that, that I didn’t want to press my luck by saying anything.”

“You’re an idiot, you know that?” Rey laughed, “you and your stupid giant hands and messy hair and that dumb scowl you are determined to wear wherever you go. You are an idiot.”

“Yeah,” Ben sighed, “guess I am.”

Then she was crashing up against him, clutching on to the sides of his face as he placed his hand against the nape of her neck, and she kissed him. It was a clumsy, fumbled thing, but so, so right. When he pulled away, he was gazing at her, beaming with happiness and Rey was sure she had never seen him really smile until this moment.

In the light of day, when they could hold on to each other, solid and real, they did it again.

And again.

And again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also also, if any of you are interested--after I post the epilogue, I'm going to be taking a break from writing long fics--though I'm totally willing to if the inspiration hits me. However, that being said, I'm also thinking of making this fic the main storyline of a collection of AU one-shots. I figured there's so much that we don't get to see attached to this universe that some of you might be interested in--ie. certain dream sequences, moments of Ben as a child, post epilogue, all that jazz. If there's anything in particular you might want to see, hit me up with a prompt and I might just deliver. :)


	25. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well guys, here it is... the epilogue. I want to thank each and every one of you for setting out on this journey with me, you have been such a great and encouraging audience, and I couldn't appreciate it more. This story has been a long time in the works, so the fact that you stuck with me all this time really makes me feel good. I'm kind of in this bittersweet state where I'm sooooo glad I've finished, but also kind of sad it's over.   
> But anyways, here is the fluff you've all been waiting for.  
> Enjoy, and thank you.

While there weren’t many people left in the galaxy who knew Kylo Ren’s true identity, as the Galactic Senate attempted to rebuild, word spread. It was only a matter of time before people would begin calling for retribution, and no matter how comfortable Ben and Rey had grown with their newfound home the last couple of months, they both knew they couldn’t stay. Leia had made arrangements for them the best she could, but even she couldn’t totally overcome the call for execution. A deal was made behind closed doors—Ben would live, but he had to disappear.

“Where are you going to go?” Finn asked, voice hushed. Rey and Ben had agreed to leave under the cloak of night, and only a select few were aware of their exit. She hadn’t been aware that Finn was one of them until she saw him standing by the Falcon.

“The outer-rim,” Rey sighed, glancing over to where Ben was speaking to his parents in a low voice, “he needs to lay low until—well until people can learn to forgive. It may never happen, but I hope—I hope one day he’ll be able to show his face in the Senate and receive a full pardon. I know that’s silly but—”

“No, no I think that’s good. Never give up, right? Rey, if it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have made it this far—I’d probably be working for some shady looking junk traders I met in a cantina on a planet I couldn’t name. I owe you for that. You believe in the good in people, ya know? A little hope can do some good,” Finn said, a weak smile pulling at his lips, “I’m gonna miss you.”

“Just because we’re laying low doesn’t mean you can’t come and visit,” Rey offered.

“As soon as you find your final destination,” Finn nodded, “I’ll swing by.”

“Good,” Rey breathed, “that’s good.” There was a tightness in her chest, saying goodbye to a friend like this. Even with the promises passing between them, Rey had no way of knowing when she’d see Finn again—or if she ever would. Just then, Ben stepped up behind her.

“It’s time to go,” he said gently, resting one of his large hands comfortably on her shoulder.

“See ya later,” Finn offered, stepping aside to let the pair pass by.

“Of course,” Rey answered, and although she couldn’t possibly know what was ahead of her, she desperately hoped it was true.

Ben and Rey made their way into the freighter, sent off the by farewell waves of Leia and Han. Rey settled down into the pilot’s chair, before turning toward Ben who still stood, towering above her.

“Hey,” she started, “what did your parents say to you back there?”

“The usual goodbyes I suppose,” Ben shrugged, “oh, and my father told me to take good care of his ship. Speaking of which, you have no idea where we’re going—so _I_ should probably be the one to take us there.”

“Are you telling me to relinquish my chair, Solo?” Rey teased, wrinkling her nose at him.

“That is exactly what I’m saying,” Ben replied, picking her up and swinging her around into a quick kiss before sliding into the pilot’s seat himself.

“That isn’t fair!” Rey giggled, squirming in her new seat—and yeah, she had no idea where life was taking her, or what would happen when she got there, but she was overwhelmingly happy with who was going with her.

“Fair is relative,” Ben quipped back as he pulled the Falcon up into the air. He hadn’t yet thrown the ship into hyperdrive, but Rey already had stars in her eyes.

*

“We’re almost there,” Ben called back at Rey. They had landed the Falcon in a clearing in the trees a few minutes back, and Rey had followed blindly as he weaved in between the tall, dark trees of the forest.

“And where exactly is ‘there’?” Rey huffed, pushing a stray strand of hair out of her eyes. Her question was answered for her, however, as she stepped through a break in the tree line. “Oh,” she breathed, realization blooming, “it was real? I always thought—”

“It was real,” Ben sighed, taking in the scene, “I was young—my dad had gotten himself into some trouble while I was with him, and he decided we should hang out as far out of the way as we could. He set us down right here in this field—and we spent the week living in the Falcon. It was horrible really, looking back—there wasn’t anything to do besides ride around on Chewbacca’s shoulders and lose at Sabbacc—but it was the best week of my life.”

Rey looked out across the meadow. No matter how many times she had seen it in their dreams, seeing it now, in person, made it all the more spectacular. Daylight shone bright and clear, cutting through the deep, green branches of the trees. Wildflowers speckled the ground, and they seemed to dance in the light breeze drifting through the grass.

“I knew—I knew it was always your favorite too,” Ben said sheepishly, ducking his head, “I always wanted to take you here sometime—and well, now is as good a time as ever.”

“Are we going to live in the Falcon for the rest of our lives?” Rey smiled, only half joking as she ticked an eyebrow upward.

“For the time being,” Ben nodded, “but only until I finish building you that house you never got to have living in that old AT-AT.” He strode out farther from the trees toward the middle of the clearing, “I was thinking it could go right about here.”

Rey beamed, warmth thrumming through her. She felt brighter than the sun in that moment, so right, and whole.

“Would you like that?” He asked her then, seeming unsure.

“Ben Solo,” Rey said, exasperated, “I would love it.”

*

_“I’m boooored,” Rey moaned, throwing herself down into the grass._

_“Well what did you want me to do about it?” Ben shot back, the man’s brow drawn down over his sullen face._

_“I dunno—can we play a game?” Rey suggested, the young girl rolling on to her stomach to look up at Ben who was scuffing at the dirt with his foot._

_“And what kind of game would we play?” He sighed, only half listening._

_“What if I ask you questions and you answer them,” Rey said, grass tickling at her sides._

_“That doesn’t sound like a very fun game,” Ben answered, but he sat down next to her anyways, seeming to agree._

_“Okay, I’ll start easy,” she mumbled, deep in thought and tongue stuck out between her teeth._

_“Please,” Ben started, the sarcasm evident in his voice, “start easy.”_

_“What’s your favorite color?” Rey asked, hazel eyes glinting in the sun._

_“Yellow,” Ben answered thoughtfully, eyes locked with hers. It was such a genuine answer that Rey was taken aback for a moment._

_“And why’s that?” She continued, but she could already feel herself fading away. The tops of the trees blended into the clouds, and the green ground seemed to sink into her skin. She missed it, his answer. Well, Rey heard it, but was convinced she must have heard wrong._

_“Because it reminds me of you.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Confetti falls from sky*  
> Congratulations Anya!   
> Why thank you reader.   
> Like I mentioned in the previous chapter, although this is the end, I'm totally willing to write some in-AU one-shots about things you might want to see. So feel free to leave me prompts in the comments, and I might just see what I can do.


End file.
